Night brought with it a blanket of stars, constellations imprinted in intricate patterns, each one twinkling in white-hot light from the heavens. The clusters coaxed, the loss of sunlight lulled, and quietly the wood found sleep until all beneath the indigo sky submitted to a dozing heaviness among the nightsong of bark and sedge. A triptych of brothers found themselves captured by the dark, standing quiet in the weave of wood, watching the fireflies blink in and out of sight; they listened to the call of crickets below, and when the silence no longer served them—the youngest broke the stillness with an attentive request. 

“Tell me about Dad again, Ivo.” The mulberry male lifted his head, ears flicking attentively toward a bay. Ebony ears shifting woven tendrils of black with each restless movement.

“That’s all you ever ask me,” Ivo blurted, snorting his annoyance and turning his sapphire eyes on his younger brother with a look that said not this again. Before continuing, he lowers his head, indigo lips mouthing at a cluster of grass beneath his hoof, chewing slowly when he does catch a bite but silent still while he takes his time unraveling a tale.

“Oh, come on now,” Knight goads, “just one story.”

Just one story, but it never was just the one, was it? Knight had been turning his ear to his siblings for years, hanging on each word they ever released, and wondering still—was there more?

“Father was a great man,” Ivo began, instilling the importance of their sire with a single statement, standing straighter as he spoke. 

“Father was a good man,” Mortal corrected, finally turning his own dark head from where he had curled up upon the earth. His great bat wings glittered with transparency, tucked carefully around his ebony body, while his lime-tinted mane fell away from his equally vivid green eyes.

Ivo tensed, if only just, sweeping his gaze across their collective, landing with irritation against his older brother.

Mortal returned the stare, slowly blinking back with a disinterested challenge. He knew Ivo was all breath and no bite.