The Cove is quiet, much too quiet for my tastes. I have had my fill of the deaths of starlings and frogs and fish. I long to move on to greater things, to study beyond what is already known. I am impatient of childhood. Children are not expected to be of any importance, or to do anything worthwhile. I would shed my age if I only knew how. I wander the Cove daily, studying the luminescent quality of the grass and learning the patterns of the tide.
He comes in, shattering the silence, and I want to thank him for it. He approaches the statue, a place mother and I visit at least once a day. The god Khaos looks out over the Cove and someday, I know, he will look out over the world and know that is filled with his own.
I wonder if he is one of my brothers for this will alter my greeting. Mother does not stand for anyone treating family badly, nor do I have any inclination to do so, but this unknown is not a member I have met before. I approach him evenly, my hooves sinking into the marshy ground. I relish the burn of my muscles, pushing them as I climb the cliff towards the boy.
His appearance instantly fascinates me. I am unaware of being rude. All that matters to me is finding out why. I move closer, my eyes cooly taking in the burns that completely encase his body. I wonder at the fire that caused those but left him breathing. I fed a frog to the fires of a lightning strike once, and it did not take long for it to be devoured.
I follow his gaze to meet the one of the iron stallion.
"He won't answer you, you know. None of us is worthy."
I say this calmly.
"Although perhaps, you may be sooner than the rest of us." I glance appreciatively from the stumps of his ears to the three jagged scars on his rump. Something has tested him, and he has not passed away. "I am Kersey."
I will learn about this new one. Who he is and of what he is capable. And if I am lucky, he will be able to teach me many things I do not know.
the academic executioner
daughter of carnage and killgore