[private] i feel a bad moon rising

[Wolfbane]

Wolfbane couldn’t help but stare at her quietly, angrily, growing more and more still when first her eyes and then Lepis’s entire demeanor turned threateningly against him. The faint gust coming off her wings when she moved them felt as real as contact to the whiskers covering Bane’s plush black nose. Like she’d already touched him, and the closer she came the closer he could feel a memory coming back to the forefront of his thoughts. He stared down at Lepis, breathing slower and focusing on the cobweb of white that touched her eyelids.

They’d fought before, but never like this.

He thinks it’s funny she calls Taiga “her” home. Then he wonders to himself, looking down with a face filled with svelte ink, if this was how she told Heartfire that Taiga was theirs. Or… hers, as it was to be called now. He blinked and considered that they hadn’t talked about that visit north yet - the one she’d meant to take when he and Lilliana went South. Perhaps we should be having that conversation,  he thinks, instead of this one.

Wolfbane registered that Lepis - his wife - was upset. He did. He stared down at her and followed the all-too-familiar edges of the white markings around her eyelids, ones that looked like gossamer cobwebs, and he neither frowned nor smiled but decided in the moment to agree with her new orders. He would stay silent and still, because she demanded it and because he could sense the boy - the one he hadn’t actually seen (when had he started to lie?)

And at the present, he was quietly much more interested in what Lepis - the Comtesse - had actually been up to in his absence.

For now the edge faded away. Wolfbane turned a curious eye and a slow smile on the boy at first, murmuring “Hello Elio.” His smile grew. The dark tint of his face mask began to fade away too. “It’s very nice to finally meet you.” The colt’s father said with a voice like the midsummer fog around them. Faint and wispy, but felt through and through.

“I like your stripes.” Bane glimmered, his mouth splitting open to reveal an average-but-loveable smile. He did like them, adored them really, and his gaze lifted to meet with Lepis’ again. He looked humbled, reaching out with gentle certainty towards those lovely cobwebs that had always been a place of comfort for him, and intended to place a gentle kiss.

But when he leaned in close enough that his lips were shaded by the thick, multicolored curtain of Lepis’s forelock, Wolfbane whispered into the crook of her waiting ear. 
“There is no you without me.” He lipped, frigid and not at all like the husband who’d left her behind in the glow of a happy, autumnal sunset just months ago. “And soon enough you will be alone with me, and then we will talk - about many, many different things.”

And he kissed her then, soft enough that she would know he meant every word with a deadly sort of certainty.

“I can see you’ve been taking good care of mother, Elio boy.” Wolfbane chuckled as he pulled his head away, eyeing the cautious bravery in his youngest. “She looks beautiful; isn’t your mother the most beautiful?” Bane wanted to know.

But of course she was. And his loving gaze seemed to say this without words when he glanced again to Lepis. “Celina?” He asked the drafty mare, a sort of hunger beginning to grow in his voice. “Pteron? Marni?” He asked her again and again, greedy for her response.

Here was one, and one was yet unaccounted for, but where were all the rest?

@[elio]
@[Lepis] if you want anything changed, let me know!