[private] your love is a secret I'm hoping, dreaming, dying to keep; ether & shadow twins

[Briseis]

I need you like a heart needs a beat
but it's nothing new--

The darkness has stayed, but here in their corner of Taiga she hardly notices.

Her life has been shadow for as long as she has known Ether. She had willingly let him wrap that darkness around her and while some may have found it fearsome and suffocating, to her it felt like security; like the safest she has ever been. It’s why when all of Beqanna became shrouded in night she did not first realize the gravity of the situation. She was not afraid of darkness; she loved a physical form of it, she spent all of her waking and sleeping moments with her heart beating against his side, with the shadows of him colliding with the warmth of her.

She is so lost in their own world that she does not notice that around them the rest of Beqanna seems to be collapsing.

Even when she finally becomes aware of it she is not afraid. She is so certain that Ether will not allow anything or anyone to harm her or their family that the idea does not even cross her mind, even though sometimes she thinks she can hear something else slipping between the trees of Taiga. Something dark, but nothing like Ether, or even Torryn—it is something sinister, but intangible, like what her nightmares used to be.

Their newest twins come into a world that is just as dark as them, a tangle of shadowy limbs and luminous yellow eyes. There is a certain swell of pride at realizing they are both shadow creatures, like their father—making three now that she has somehow carried for him, despite she herself not being anything special. Their birth had been a strange one, but in the abyss of darkness and lost under the waves of all the regular pains that accompanied birth she had not really noticed; just that the pain had been there, bright and all consuming, and then all at once, they were here.

They are old enough now though that it was difficult to convince them to stay close. The entire world had become their playground, and they were prone to flitting in and out of shadows despite her stern requests to stay close. She knew that Ether would not let anything happen to them, but she has always been too overprotective of her children, and knowing that things besides the creatures they were used to lurked in the dark did little to settle her nerves.

She walks cautiously now through their familiar thicket of trees, her own black coat not quite fully immersed in the dark the way theirs would be, but certainly close to it. She listens for the familiar childish talking and laughter that she sometimes heard coming from places that she could not see, but after finding nothing she returns to Ether’s side, somewhat exasperated. “Will you please find them and tell them to come back? They were told to not be gone for this long.”

-- briseis.

[Ether]

I've learned to live with these fatal gifts
and still you're mine

As their family grew, Ether could only revel in the impossible perfection of life with her. He frets when she carries their children - he cannot seem to help himself - but as with their siblings before them, they come into this world without complication. The pair had been a surprise, though he supposes it should not have been. Not when they have always been so prevalent in his family.

Just as Briseis had grown lost in their haven, so too had he. He had noticed the changes to the outside world (it would have been impossible not to), but darkness had never frightened him. In many ways, it had proven pleasant. Were it not for the unnatural creatures that had risen from the earth in tandem with the eternal night, he would have been perfectly content to ignore the disappearance of the sun.

But he had recognized the hunger in the beasts and had taken steps to ensure his family need not fear them. They proven uninterested in the creatures like him, lacking in what they crave, but they would have gladly taken Briseis. Something he would never allow. And so, when she slept, he did what was necessary to keep them safe, flinging them unwillingly to the farthest reaches he could find. Though more always came, they were met with the same welcome.

His thoughts are distant when Briseis returns to his side (he is never far, but he fears if he clung too close she might worry why. A worry that might bring her nightmares back). He is swiftly attentive, his faint alarm replaced by amusement at her exasperated request. Trying to contain the twin shadows is much like trying to contain the wind. Though he worries for them in this uncertain world, the inherent protection of their shadowy forms is a comfort.

Brushing his lips against her cheek, he murmurs softly, “I’ll be back in a moment.”

True to his word, he is. Erebos and Charisma, though daring and talented, are too young to have fully mastered their abilities. It is a simple enough task to locate them and return them (no doubt slightly less than willingly), to their mother’s side. Charisma huffs, pouting into her brother’s side as she avoids looking at her mother. She is perfectly cognizant of their disobedience, but with Erebos (ever the leader of their escapades), it’s so easy to ignore consequence.

Ether

@[jenger] @[Briseis]

[erebos]

He is the night. He is the dark and eternal absence of light, he is every shadow and every pair of predator eyes glinting against the deepest black. He is the sound of crickets, the cacophony of every night, and he is the silence that consumes. He is here and he is everywhere, and there is no place off limits to him except that which he cannot yet imagine.

It is all of this that makes him prone to wandering, it is his very nature that prevents him from being cowed by the unknown lingering out in the dark, that keeps him everywhere except at his mothers side where it is safe and warm, where children should want to be. But he has no need to fear that which he is, and what he is is in everything now.

So when his father steps out of the nearest dark, the only sign of him the smoldering yellow of his twin moon eyes, Erebos can feel frustration well up in him like a raging tide. He is not ready to return home, not ready to acknowledge the ache that had been growing all day of missing his gentle mother with her stern worries and disguised affections. He will be happy to return to her later and find sleep against the crook of her chest, but not now, not yet.

Except the girl they had cornered bolts from them the moment he is distracted, and by the time Erebos turns back to face her, there is nothing for his yellow eyes to find. His frustration doubles and fury spills from him in silent waves, drowning him beneath a surface that never stops roiling, beneath depths too vast to swim.

“Why do they hate us?” He asks as each of them bleed out of Ether’s portal. He touches his sister’s neck when she comes to stand beside him, exhaling his frustration so that the floating wisps of her silken shadow mane dance and spin with a weightlessness only he is close enough to see. But then he turns to their mother, gentling as he reaches out to push his nose against her cheek in wordless apology. It is so hard not to drift, but he never means to leave her worrying.

Unlike Charisma, he chooses to drain his frustration on his father, resentful that he had come to gather them up from their explorations. He knew it had likely been at mother’s request, but it was much harder to be mad at her. “I only want to know why they always run from us. Are we bad?” He says it with the shallowness of a child, frustrated but not yet wounded by the rejection. But then he sighs and his dark mouth is a frown that turns invisible by the time it reaches his glowing eyes.

“Mother, you know we always come back when we’re done.” The frown wavers, an odd kind of impish amusement making his eyes shine brighter and his dark teeth flash as he smiles. “We are always back before morning.” Because morning, though he doesn’t truly understand what that is, what day is, has never returned in his lifetime.

EREBOS

like fists unraveling, like glass unshattering,
i want to be astonished

@[Ether]
@[Briseis]