This ancient and insane theater,
There is not the whisper of new-motherly demeanor.
She does not tuck her ears into her tangle of mane, and does not make to chase him off with the fury of teeth and hoof.
She does not tuck them in behind her; and if there is any tenderness in her, it is only in the way she lips the black colt’s wet forelock, muttering to herself softly. The little blue girl looks at him with unsure eyes and pushes herself into the crook of her mother’s belly; the black boy presses into her chest, his nostrils flaring for his scent, his sockets searching hopelessly. She has seen him around (his unusual wings are a curious thing). He has an air of authority about him...
(Maybe he knows where we can put the girl... for good…)
The red woman smiles at him, uncharacteristically soft – it is not right, it is a perversion of that parental glow. A predatory quirk of her soft, damp lips. “Hello.” She is not new, but she has yet to encumber herself with loyalty or affection for this place; so she is more like a wandered here than anything, and her pregnancy had kept her well occupied throughout the winter.
She would be caught by his reptilian wings, examining the edges of his scales, if she weren’t more fixated on her most precious find to date. Maybe next time. Maybe as the light of the sun further peaks the piney horizon and she can better see the magnificent and cruel leather and bone.
Her new curiosity is not more cold and strange than Death And Dying. He lacks the hot fissures of fire like the Firegod. Without shadows, like Michaelis’ wanton friends.
But he is unnatural and unsettling looking all the same. A skull, wrapped in slick black fur, rounded at the nostrils and flat along the bridge, but lacking the careful craftsmanship of those around him. Where his blue niece is unfortunate in her normalcy, he is a prince in his grotesquery. And he is yet revealed in full, still hiding something inside that coltish body.
The red woman takes a half step back. She eagerly tucks her nose into her chest and behind the boy’s side, pushing him forward and away from her. Even on his unsteady legs, and without his sight to orient his body, he manages to stay upright, just. “Interesting, isn’t it?” But he is not really, in the grand scheme of things, as is. Only a bit disturbing in his incompleteness. But that is enough for now, after the disappointment of her own progeny. She holds him at nose length so the dragon can get a good look. Her black-brown eyes peering up at him with a glint, so unlike their regular dullness.
lines and shading
by bronzehalo
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