October 16, 2023, 11:18 PM
Set after this thread. I literally cried as I was writing this! Had to pause several times.
Heda had gathered her children and abandoned her post as wife in one quick and unthoughtful swoop. The little adventure onto the mainland had been one messy plan turned disaster, to come home to a mate and son left behind, left for dead.
Malakai did not know why God had decided to take them away so swiftly, without a time for a single goodbye. Malakai prayed for the strength to understand. Prayed for a sign to know his father was seated next to the other in heaven. Prayed that Judah, somehow, someway, might be still out there... somewhere...
As it were, no one was here. Not now, not anywhere. He watched his mother depart without a word of goodbye. It seemed after having left one son behind, already she had forgotten the consequences of this and left behind yet another. Kai didn't bother to stay long enough to watch Dinah or Ava go. They all turned their backs on all which they had come to build, to love, to bring into holy light- their home, their sanctuary, their temple. Heda, Dinah, Ava, John... They turned their backs and so they turned themselves from God.
They had all lost their faith, but Malakai had not.
Quietly, Malakai made his way back to the den in the Greenhills. A place once buzzing with too many mouths and too much noise, noq as silent as the grave his father freshly rest within. It would be the first night Kai was ever alone and it would not be the last.
The young silvered boy went into the furthest back wall, where the darkness could envelope him holy. It smelt still heavily of Judah and Kai thought for a moment it could almost feel his warmth pressing against him, hear the fluttering of his quickened heart beat, the whine in this voice with a happiness that Kai had returned from his day's journey and wondering what gifts his twin had brought back with him.
Malakai laid down and gently picked up the shell he had found for Judah and set it in front of him. He rocked it back and forth over the den floor with his paw.
It's me and you, Judah...He murmurs to himself in the quiet dark.
Just me and you...