07-15-2017, 06:47 PM
if there's a light at the end, it's just the sun in your eyes
He stares, unseeing, at the cloudy lake before him. It had been so beautiful, so clear, and so obviously the focal point of Hyaline. Now, nearly three weeks later, it is still barely translucent through the ash from the trees and grass that Levi had burned, and small fish carcasses dotted the shores as they washed up, gradually, from Maugrim's destruction.
Even his favorite wisteria tree, the one that he still stands beneath, his charred and black. Hyaline is bleak these days, and he, even bleaker. Hoof steps break the silence (a mass exodus of the birds) and Amet almost smiles, because who else could it be but Tang? But when he turns his head, his leather-plated neck glinting in the late autumn sun, the King of Hyaline comes face to face with his sister.
He is immediately tense, every muscle in his lithe frame coiled as Iset approaches him, sorrow drawn into her face and an obvious limp in her step. Almost like Tang's, he doesn't say. She reaches for his shoulder just as they had always done, her own metallic coat a bright spot that contrasts Hyaline's current gray. Amet doesn't move. He can't. But he doesn't reassure her with warmth, either. He allows his younger sister to whisper her apology into his shoulder, her breath warm against him, as he spits his response, "It was naive to think that they would not take advantage of your trying to impress them."
I can't stay here. I love you.
Amet's jaw clenches and she steps away from him. He keeps his gaze, hurt and heavy with impending tears, locked on Iset's eyes, despite her own averted gaze. "I will always love you, Iset. But you need to come back when you are ready to be a Queen to these people."
And you are far from ready, he doesn't say, as she turns and runs from him.
His tears finally break the surface.
Amet
@[Iset] @[Sakir]