This isn’t her father, she wants to say.
This can’t be him.
Her father was kind. Gentle. He was strong and she knew he was fierce, but never with her—never in front of her. He was the man who took her on diplomatic visits and then guided her through them with quiet whispers and tender nudges. He played tag with her until she could no longer run. He pressed kisses into her neck and told her stories and took him with her when he patrolled the border.
He was a good man.
This couldn’t be him.
Horror rises up her throat as she realizes that the mangled, half-eaten thing on the ground is a child—a baby—and she feels her stomach twist painfully. She remains locked in place, her scaled legs trembling, her sage green eyes wide and brimming with tears. When her father reaches her, when he runs those burnt lips across her cheek, she trembles and fear races up her spine, clenching her heart painfully in her chest.
“What have you done?” she says softly, barely whispering the words.
Finally, she angles her head to look at him. This great stallion who towers over her still, his face mutilated and his neck turned from her. “I don’t understand.” She echoes the same words her mother had said, and her face wears the same expression of disbelief, of an entire world being torn asunder.
“What can’t you remember?”
This time, there is more heat, an anger that flares in her chest, something for her to hold onto. Something for her to white-knuckled grip as the world tilts precariously beneath her feet.
“You can’t remember abandoning us?” the accusation is white-hot and only bordered with hesitation. Her mother had never admitted that her father had left them, had kicked them out of Loess, but as she had gotten older, it had been a nagging sensation in the back of her mind—a festering wound she did her best to ignore. “You can’t remember killing this innocent child?” This one is more certain, a stronger barb as she glances toward the crumpled body and gags. “What can’t you remember exactly?”
She takes a step back, shaking her head.
“I-I can’t. I can’t anymore.”
She watches as her hero of a father turns to dust between her fingers.
“Did you ever even love us?”
howl at the half moon, radio queen. she's all smoke. she's all nicotine.
@[vulgaris]