Desreal: that's ok, we love/hate you too.

“ We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. ”

- Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

It didn’t take much for me to perceive the truth.

In fact, it took one look at his mother-of-pearl hide, and to see it mirrored in my sister’s own – it’s undeniable. I knew then that he remembered it; perhaps regretted it.

What are they, I hear my mother’s winds echo, mimicking his voice – a fine one at that – to perfection; it’s always amusing to note how they could cast irony even in such a simple thing. They are yours, they inevitably answer; ours, really. Apparently your need for over achievement isn’t limited to Ersatz, dear. They have a right to know their father, don’t you think?

Something isn’t right.

Though thinking, the winds mock, was not involved then, that I recall.

It isn’t my mother’s sarcasm, nor my father’s disjointed dialogue. It’s his fear – his pure, unmistakable fear – that draws me in, wary, to Alk’s side – because something isn’t right, and mother’s eyes are red, bloodshot, as if Andürien’s fire found its way into them; and her limbs trembling – not visibly, no, but subtly.

I’d never seen mother like this. That frightens me more than anything; more even that the delicate gashes open against her neck (when? When?) where the scars were, bleeding cords and rivulets that seem to freeze almost instantly, billowing in the increasingly fast wind.

The wrongness, it’s in the winds – too much, too wild, circling around us like wolves, hounding in, closer and closer –

It takes me awhile to realize that, for the first time, mother isn’t isn’t surrounded in snow.

The ground… it’s not alive, either. It’s – like water and fire, smoke and mist.

Take her away!, this time, it’s my winds – it’s their voice in rustle and groan and wuthering, even – that speaks to me.

Well. They’re right. even I can see that she isn’t well, and father – how strange, to have a father – isn’t either.

“Mother?” I tug at her mane – she seems strangely quiet, staring at him with that kind of fixation that speaks Bad Things – “I think – you should go. We’ll stay. Talk to him and all.”

Or at least, I will; I just hope Alk will stay with me.

***
jörmungandr
there is hope, but not for us