lord, I fashion dark gods too;
A good father he is not.
This is old – ancient – news, of course. He’s played at it, a handful of times with varying levels of sincerity, but he is too easily bored or disappointed with his offspring to have a hand in anything other than their creation. Still, he is more fond of those who bear his lineage than he is of others, even if it means little.
Most of his children, he doesn’t know by sight alone, he has to reach out, feel for his own blood-signature in their veins. But he knows her, because she looks like her mother, a familiar face he knows better than most. He doesn’t know where this one falls in their progression of children and so he reaches out, plucks this information from her, and he smiles.
He’s still smiling when he makes himself known. There are no theatrics, this time – he is simply, suddenly, there before her. She is hurting – he’d felt that much – and he is curious why, because he is bored and she looks enough like her mother that his eyes stay fixed on her.
He doesn’t know if she recognizes him. He is a plain dapple gray, today. So easily, so gravely mistaken for a nothing.
“Islas,” he says, and he makes his voice soft, “how are you?”
He waits, then, to see if she’ll lie.
c a r n a g e
@Islas