There was silence in the absence of her mother. In the dark pit of fading warmth, a small drop of spun honey roused in fear desperately feeling for the lost rise and fall of her mother's breathing. This was the first time Kyna noticed Aponi's absence, milky eyes swallowed by endless anxiety and hunger for the moonbow in her mother's bright blue ones. She pulled onto limp limbs, wobbling over to the dim orb of white that stood in the entrance of the den. It filled her eyes, swallowed her mind. The world must revolve around this. The way the child saw herself in the face of the bluest moon, isolated as a single black star, ravenous as the wind. That is what created Kyna.

With all the strength a child could muster up in to one shrill cry, she bellowed into the brand new concept. Life: absent and meaningless as the forgone plateau shale that sought to cradle a soft heart in gnarled slates. Between two mediums, exposed rock and hollowed sky, the pup cried for that life and the abusive mother who she mistakenly loved. She cried for the false warmth and the space between her gray lungs, the way it pushed her farther away with each breath. Every moment of warmth had turned dead cold as stone. Even the bats shook from their places in the overhang of sparse branches, but not a mother stirred.

Even in week-old youth, the honey-child's deepest fear was dark, silent absence. The cold of the Plateau's altitude crawled into her downy fur the instant she took a step into the new world, which was just as vacant as her nightmare. Her sharp cries dwindled as the minutes chased past, her voice seemingly swept away by whistling gusts of midnight wind. Her mother's warmth was all she had, all that she really ever experienced. This rare glimpse of the hollow globe came firmly at the price of fear. Kyna could only reduce her wearing voice to the long dull whines that brought out a white figure from the darkness.

He came forth like that stark moon, rising higher above her pebble-sized body, glowing whiter with each regal step. His eyes glowed elusively warm, like two tired flames, reaching out with all they had in concern. Kyna buckled back as he neared, scooting into a curved rock rather than the safe den entrance. She'd only remembered the large paleness of this wolf, but not the strength of his vivid eyes or his disciplined voice. She cowered beneath him, shutting the eyes that had seen too much for one night behind tight lids, yearning for the protection of her mother. "No, no," she squeaked, unaware of how much adrenaline coursed through her tiny body, how an untried growl rattled in the fragile part of her chest. She didn't know what was happening to herself much less her poor father that took the brunt of her tantrum. She wouldn't know or understand how he felt watching his daughter display her wild resentment for him.

But she knew her life again as she saw Aponi's icy irises freeze the vivid light of her father's. At once her cry ceased, and a bubbly "Mmma," took its place. Kyna followed her mother's lead back to the forgotten location of the den's entrance, but she paused at the opening, staring shyly over her shoulder at the willowy white man still lingering awkwardly behind.

Aponi could see as soon as her daughter came into sight that she was clearly in distress and that the cause had been Phineas. While she immediately felt protective over Kyna and wanted to shield her from the danger which in this case was her father she also felt a small thrill. The blonde girl loved her and hated the ghostly man, her jealousy was appeased at least for the current moment.  Feeling her daughter melt into her touch and follow quietly behind her was all the reassurance that the mother needed. Her whole existence since the pup had been born had been trying to prove that she was nothing like her own mother had been, she wasn't just physically present but emotionally as well. Some might have called it over bearing and codependent, a mother should never depend on her child but Aponi did.

The blue eyes watched as Kyna hesitated in the doorway, stopping to look towards her father. Seeing the snarl on Phineas' features made Aponi tense, how could he possibly be doing this in front of their daughter? Their disdain for each other was no secret and hadn't been since he had questioned her pregnancy but to do this in front of the girl was unacceptable.  Narrowing her eyes she hissed, "I do not keep her from you. You keep yourself from her, she's afraid of you and that is not my doing it is your own." She left it at that though she truly wished she could keep going and tell the Arygris exactly what she thought about him but she bit her tongue. Her daughter did not need to see them at each other's throats, especially when she was afraid of the man as it was.

Kyna wished then, as she swept her eyes, so longingly blue, into her father's fierce ones that he would revitalize or somehow change things. How could someone so young find an ounce of good behind wildfire irises and dark shadows? She could only see what the moon's light would allow of his gaze - and it was a twisted, red-eyed snarl. The light bleached his teeth dangerously sharp and bristled the ends of his ghastly coat. What Kyna saw, bowing up before her very mother, was a monster.

The small, honeyed girl jolted up under her mother's belly with a shrill yelp, struggling to find her way through the den's entrance. She skirted halfway into the bulky wall before plummeting down into the darkest, safest depths she could. With her heart racing the speed of sound, Kyna could just hear the distorted exchange of her mother and the tail end of her father's haunting snarl in the concussion of it all. She felt safe in the black, warm reality of the den. It was once her birthplace, and for some reason that night, twice. She felt rudely awakened to her new reality, one darker than what birth was, one stranger to her than before. As her heartbeat steadied into a swift, but manageable pulse she thought to herself one thing only: my father is a monster, my father is a monster...

There is a monster outside of here and he is at our door.

The voices continued, and time was negligible. She didn't know what her mother was saying but it sounded strong and protective. But noting could erase what those powdery eyes saw: a hellish, menacing monster. A transformation, a metamorphosis of what could have - should have bloomed into beautiful trust, wickedly winced into sickening aversion. Kyna's breath came in gulps and her eyes watered unknowingly in the black security. What she didn't know was that this darkness and remote warmth within it would forever be her place of security.