it had only been a few hours since arcturus' discovery that his eyes were changing, yet it did not stop him from obsessively and worriedly peering at his glassy reflection every few minutes or so. arcturus still could not reconcile the alien color with his inner picture of him and who he was. he could not reconcile how that smear of in-volatile yellow constantly stared back at him.

hydra had made him feel better, but he hated it. he didn't want his eyes to change, and paranoid, started fretting other things would change about him too.

what if his sleek black coat turned to grey like revui's? or his ears lost their crisp upright stature? what if his eyes changed again, or remained this way - mostly blue with a vile streak of unwanted yellow through them? and what if his mom didn't like it, or his dad, and siblings?

with a small growl he smacked the surface of the pool with a paw, and frustrated, plunged up and down into the muddy depths. little growls sounded from his stressed throat and he circled relentlessly in the mud, attacking it with a fervor as if it had done him this colossal wrongness -- as if the source of his unhappiness sprung up from this now murky and splattered puddle that didn't deserve to be there anymore.

there seemed little spirit left in the boy, who watched gannet with a baleful type of expression. an expression of hopelessness, out of place and distressing to see on the cherubic countenance of a babe. all the same, arcturus' first tragedy had struck -- having never experienced such gravid disappointment, he lacked the perspective to understand this simply was not world ending.

but it was world-ending, in his eyes -- no pun intended. as he watched gannet try to make sense of his dejected deportment, he only seemed to sink deeper into the mud. not even the obscene splatter of dark mud against the omega's pale coat elicited a smile from arcturus, who meted out a long-suffering sigh and simply closed his eyes in response to gannet's attempts to cheer him.

arcturus remained despondent, his eyes fluttered shut and the fractured yellow of them momentarily hid from the world. he did not want gannet to see the stain that blemished his deep blue -- nor did he wish to relive the heartbreak of finding his most possessing, unifying feature stolen from him. muttering something into his muddied paws, the little black cub let loose a body-heaving sigh.

he knew gannet was attempting, at the very least, to distract him -- but he could not be distracted from the flaw that threatened to destroy the most entrenched symbol of his identity. reluctantly the boy opened his eyes, this time heaving another sigh in gannet's direction.

the boy stirred just enough to glance at gannet, who had done everything thus far to entice arcturus from his melancholy mood. he would not be budged; with a heavy sigh the boy rose and muttered a quiet "bloo," before he crawled towards moonspear's omega. his posture defeated, his eyes downcast, the dark ostrega sought to press his head into gannet's body and if allowed, would hug him tightly as he wrestled with his newfound identity.

the feeble child's advances were left uncontested; feeling no resistance, arcturus buried himself deep within the thick scruff of gannet's neck, comforted by both the familiarity and the warmth. his vocabulary was too limited for him to express his disconsolate emotions, and even if he had mastered a workable lexicon, he was too distraught to be comprehensible.

it didn't take long for him to be lulled into a sense of security, and from there, the dark child's chest rose up and down slowly, and eventually, soft snores and snuffs were heard from within the crook of gannet's arms.