[open] that's my cross to bear

[elio]

elio

some say I should learn to cry but I only learned how to fight
and I know everything must die but nothing fades like the light

It's typically very easy for Elio to lie to himself these days. Not that it was terribly hard before, but the crushing weight of solitude has molded his morals: crumbled the sharp edges to dust, rained on the remnants to create sticky clay, hardened by a cold winter sun into some amorphous, alien shape.

It's easy for him to lie to himself, and he knows this deep down--way, way down where the singing ocean of life still beckons, where the man of anger and certainty still buzzes with desperate energy, paddles in the shallows crying out for Elio to wake, just wake up.

(Dreaming is so easy.)

He lies to himself, now. Lies as he pretends he cannot hear his approaching sister until she is upon him.

"Eyas?" the striped man croaks out, blinking bleary gray eyes to sharpness when her nose bumps gently into his loosely hanging wings. He turns his head, shifting his back legs just enough to face her with a hesitant smile. "Eyas," he breathes out, and doesn't feel the tension he felt when he imagined reunions with his family. With a shake of his tangled, red mane and a heavy breath out, he steps forward to brush his cheek with hers in a familiar, eager greeting. There's love in such a simple brush--love and something else (doubt? fear?).

"Come here," he murmurs next, "it's cold." Elio shifts to make more room under the twinkling, icy branches.

"What're you doing out here? What have you been up to?" he questions quietly, and it's meant to be lighthearted, but his voice barely holds the tone under the weight of their shared worry: Wolfbane.