I saw blood, and a bit of it was mine; vaermina

[Caius]

when is a monster not a monster? oh, when you love it Unbeknownst to him, they both stem from the same rotted thing (though he spilled from her rancid womb and sipped soured milk whilst she was created from an ill magic). He doesn’t even see her, the mare with some faint resemblance to himself (he takes far more after his father, stocky and black, only a snip of white across his nose). He doesn’t see her because he is inside himself, thinking of blood and loss, those near constant companions. He is thinking of the deserts and wondering if it’s even home anymore, with his parents and half-siblings mostly gone from its dunes. He is thinking of the ghosts, who perch at the edge of his mind, the low susurrus that is a constant, now. He’s learned to block it out, to mute it (never entirely, but it becomes a sort of white noise he’s learned to live with). He lives with a constant sense of dread that one day he will hear Else’s voice amongst the ghosts, and know his worst fears have come to pass – that she has died, and he has failed her. Did it hurt, comes a voice, and then he sees the filly – black, like him, though grey peppers at her skin and he thinks she will not be that way for long. “Yes,” he says, before she continues on (it always hurts though. Doesn’t it?), to which he says, again, “yes.” Yes, it hurt. Yes, it always hurts. He’s a boy who’s known hurt all his life, who isn’t even sure how to live without it. (He almost likes it, sometimes. God help him, he almost likes it. Like it’s something he deserves. A stigmata.) “Caius,” he says, and dips his head slightly in greeting. He tries to fold his wings back out of instinct, but there is nothing there, instead the flex and tension of muscles cause a rivulet of blood to trace a path down his shoulder, gentle as a caress. c a i u s vanquish x chantale