teach me the blood of the moon

First time exiting the den; midnight, full moon.

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.

He did not stray far -- though he did not sleep within the den with them. his and Aponi's relationship.. or agreement, at best, was something he treated like eggshells -- fragile, and quite broken. Yet when he heard the puppy bray in to the night, the large regal was upon his paws swiftly, his eyes scanning the midnight cloaked land, as if a flash of silver would reveal Aponi's return. he did not believe her to be gone far, and so his eyes drifted unto the honeyed daughter he did not know very well.. but who pulled at his heartstrings nonetheless.

"Kyna," he rumbled quietly, closing the distance between them, though he made no move to usher her swiftly back within the confines of the den. There were no traces of himself in the month old pup.. her pelt was of spun honey.. a trait carried by his family, but also a common hue. Darkr cinnamon coursed along her forehead and down to her spine, but this was not a trait within his family either.. and so, for now, he still only held Aponi's word that the girl before him was his own -- that the Aquila had not slept with another before knocking upon his doorstep that fateful night.

Setting down to stretch his larger body upon the cool ground, the ivory wolf noted the stiffness in his shoulder was still apparent.. the attack from the lynx had left a mark upon his body.. one he was not sure would ever diminish. "It is late," he continued, his bright eyes flashing in her direction, wondering if she still sought her mother so desperately now that his company was with her.

Phineas' assumption had been correct, Aponi had not gone far when Kyna had awoken and let out her cry into the night. She had been visiting the nearest cache to eat her fill while her daughter slept and had hoped to return before she even noticed her mother's absence. Unfortunately she was only a few bites into her meal when the quiet of the night was broken by the shrill howl. Immediately she abandoned the morsel, reburying it hastily before making her way back towards the den. Her steps slowed the second that the ghostly figure that lay near the entrance came into view, so Phineas had beaten her there. The very sight of him made her tense, their relationship still full of unanswered questions and silent accusations. To the Aquila it felt as if every gaze he laid upon their daughter was looking for some way that she had been neglected.

The Argyris man had never said anything of the sort to Aponi, but she felt the need to overcompensate anyways.  The silver paws carried her forward until she upon the pair of them and could hear Phineas' voice. Slipping past the man without a word of explanation as to where she had been the fae softly pressed her muzzle against the child's crown.  Nudging her gently back towards the interior of the den she murmured, "Your father's right, it's much too late for you to be up." The new mother paused then waiting for her daughter's response, ready to follow behind her into the den if she obeyed.  Of course if Kyna was anything like her mother it would require at least one story before she actually settled back into her slumber.

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.

A wild dissertation appears!

Aponi's presence was colder than the winter that had stolen his first born son. She brushed past him without a word, and no sooner did his eyes stray once more upon the petite figure of his daughter did she practically block her from his sight. He felt his jaws tense in that moment, his muscles grow rigid. Kyna's words and posture had stung -- the girl shying from him as she barely recognized him. He could have broken contact with both of them then -- bidding them a good evening, and sweeping away to be with the children he knew he had sired without a shadow of a doubt. Yet he remained rooted to the spot, his stomach churning as if he had been kicked in the gut.. Kyna's baby blue eyes flashing over her shoulder to look at him once more as she was ushered in to the den.

His stoical features locked upon Aponi then -- her svelte figure pale within the moonlight. "If she is my daughter as you claim," he began, his lips curling back to a silent snarl, though he shook it from his features soon enough, lest his daughter continued to look on. "Then you cannot keep her from me forever." Every visit he gave, she was cold -- aloof and uncaring. He would tolerate for only so much longer.. the girl would only need the milk of her mother for a little time more, and the dangerous glint in his ember eyes seemed to speak volumes of such a possibility.

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.

A wild dissertation appears!

Last post for Phin!

It would seem that despite his silence – the revealed teeth had been caught by the girl, and it was enough to cause her to flee. He grimaced outwardly then, Aponi’s words not lost on him as he admitted defeat to her words. She was correct, and his gaze fell upon her, acknowledging this with only a nod. She held every right to be enraged – had another struck fear in to his child, he too would have held the same reaction.. perhaps, if not fiercer.

With Kyna gone in to hiding from the wolf that stood so close to her door, and Aponi’s sharp eyes upon him and anger emanating toward him, the ivory beast withdrew from the scene. He spoke nothing more, and pulled away from the mother. Moonlight stirred him further down the slopes of the Plateau, and he did not seek out his yearling children or Hypatia – he was not in the favor of any of them, and it would do him no good to try to appease anyone tonight.

Instead, the Argyris wolf thought to clear his head, and he would continue to wander and so until the light of the sun beckoned across the horizon once more – and even then, he did not know how he could mend his broken family after everything. His children avoided him, as did Aponi – if this was truly meant to be the fresh start for the Argyris clan.. then it would appear that he was the culprit of their misery, and not Magnolia Glen.

It was her mother’s fierce protection, the child noted behind watery blue eyes, that had turned the terrifying wolf away from their home. Phineas did not attempt to mollify either her mother or herself, only to disperse. Later, the princess might puzzle over the notion. For the time being, the honey-spun pup simply curled into a tiny ball, eyes wide as she continued to watch the opening for any sign of her father’s return. Her entire body shook – not from the chill of night, but from the heightened adrenaline now draining away from the child. Until this very moment, her world had been nothing but safety. There was hunger, perhaps, and occasional discomfort – so was the fate of the first child born to a new, inexperience mother – but never before had Kyna been so terrified.

After several moments of silence, the girl tucked her large paws beneath her body, forming a puppy loaf as she tried to make herself as small as she possibly could. When Aponi did not return to her side immediately, the child allowed herself a whine – the sound was long and low, as desperate as it was mournful and lonely. Hopefully, her mother would soon return to blanket her from the terrors outside the small home they’d made deep within the belly of Silent Moon Plateau. There they could drift into peaceful sleep, and Kyna would be satisfied knowing that as long as her mother was near, she would be safe…even from the most wicked of monsters. Again, she whined, and turned her head away from the den’s opening.

Kyna had little interest in the world outside.

Fade Kyna.

A wild dissertation appears!