[private] Kagerus, dear

[Kagerus]

kagerus

and in my dreams, i kissed your lips a thousand times

Of him, I think little. Of that whole side of my family, next to nothing... My parents, father and adopted mother, they reside still in these sloping Hyaline hills, but they are nomads at heart. Lost to the love of one another, they feel not the need to make themselves public. Father did wish me a heartfelt congratulations upon my coronation, tears gathering wetly in eyes that are cracked with age but still wholesome and wise. Like Kagerou, he whispered, gathering me into himself; I love you, my darling daughter.

Even then, in his embrace, I hadn't dared to ask. About his son, the heralder, the foreseer. When the shadows grow tall and grotesque I always look behind me, wondering if he has been watching this whole time - he'd been so angry when last I'd seen him, angry enough to leave me in a heap in the middle of nowhere, struggling with a news I'd never expected to receive. My heart breaks to remember it, and him.

Little brother. I'd spoken to you in the womb, sung you songs, gotten to know you before you even knew yourself. I'd soothed your nightmares and gathered you to my chest with a motherliness I'd not expected of myself. We knew each other as the dark knows the light, two opposing forces that were somehow and impossibly connected. I loved you, Khaedrik - and you left me. Where are you now?

He comes in a whirl of darkness so intense that there can be no mistaken the source of the shadows today. Whatever task I'd been focused on falls the wayside as my bones seem to liquefy within their muscled enclosures. My children and my wife and my estranged ex lover all seem to dwindle in importance as I am forced to face a brother whose wrath still falls upon me; the lash of his tongue dispels any breath I had left, and so I stand, gasping, not knowing how to react.

How could I? He gave me no time to be ready for this. No time at all.

"I thought you were dead." The words are choked and emotionally clouded; at once they sound venomous and tragic, pleading and joyous. I can't decide how to feel, not as my eyes try and try and try to decipher a familiar shape out of the mass of shadows before me. I step forward, towards him, nose outstretched - please, I beg. Please do not leave me again.

@[Khaedrik]