Lost Creek Hollow plurimi

@Aquillius, here in riverclan.

he wanted to know why his son had left kvarsheim. and he found suddenly he could hardly face his son.

there was no atonement.

quietly he called out for the boy who had taken his frame and carried the lineage of mereo and editum alike.

For Aquillius, existing had suddenly become a chore.

And nothing refuted his claim to bad luck in his footsteps. In fact, what he knew now only solidified it.

Doedapple had been absent from his life for several weeks. He had learned she’d grown gravely ill.

He’d learned she’d lost the child she carried.

It rankled in his chest.

When he came, it was with red rimmed eyes and dark shadows that spoke to too many sleepless nights and too long holding tears back with extreme force. He looked dejected, he looked ill at heart, haunted by the black magic that had touched his heart and his mind.

Father. He tried to arrange himself into the stand of a soldier, but only succeeded in getting his feet together before he was wobbling and had to widen his stance all over again.

his son, destroyed.

germanicus stepped at once, stopping short of an embrace.

these things were still difficult for him. still he reached to the young soldier, yellowpaint eyes firm with worry.

"what has happened?" he looked at aquillius, searching for blood, for open wounds.

He came so close that it prickled at Aquillius’s skin. He wasn’t the physical type, a product of his environment, but in that moment, he thought he’d quite like a hug.

He shook off the thought as childish dribble.

Nothing of note.

Just the dark stain of black magic turning him slowly from soldier to beacon of doom.

His single eye watched his father, his idol, the man he’d follow to the ends of the earth, and he flinched to realize that the comfort he’d once drawn from him was now collapsing into a mire of mixed emotions surrounding…well. Everything really.

Aquillius had never been more tired. His knees threatened collapse, but he stood strong.

a soldier's lie.

germanicus did not press.

instead his thoughts were upon the greening things he had plucked and placed into the valley. surely now they had dried enough in potency.

"why did you leave kvarsheim:?"

his arms ached to hold his son.

His father seemed to like hard questions.

I wished to repay the healer. He tried not to let his face twitch.

I did not sleep within Kvarsheim after I was healed. A small, bitter part of him said which you would know if you were here but he did not allow that bitter part quarter.

I was convinced to stay. For a time. Aquillius tried again to stand up straight as a soldier would, and ended up only being able to pull his legs in a little further than before. His vision swam, and he blinked away the spots there.

i mean to leave you here. i have a report to carry south.

but aquillius was not a child.

a final two hunts for kvarsheim, and then perhaps with his silent eaglet he might go.

how could he think of leaving the boy again?

and yet — his sins followed, lapping with inkblackened tongue at his heels.

this also could not be his son's birthright, or the final legacy of mereo.

"you are unwell. sit." that much germanicus felt he could command with rusted father's intuition.

Sit, his father commanded, and like the loyalest of hounds, he sat. Heavy, his haunches met the ground with a dull thump. His eyes went distant, far away from the moment he was in.

Eventually, his eye turned to his father, voice a rasp in a throat that did not want to speak.

Can you tell me more? Of where we come from? A desperate child’s want for stories, even if Aquillius tried his hardest to deny it.

tales of editum.

of emperors. of queen mothers and cold brothers.

germanicus did not want to speak of these things, nor the sister he had once loved beyond all life.

"your grandfather was a strong man. he led a great kingdom, and i was in charge of its armies. my brother became emperor after him."

no names, and he begged inside himself that aquillius would not ask and force germanicus to discover that all his stock in lineage and titles meant nothing now.

His father didn’t have much to say, but then again, did either of them ever? Aquillius felt a new frustration in his chest, but it died quickly among the other feelings.

He looked to his feet.

What of Mars? His single eye looked up from examining his toenails.

I’ve never heard of him.

"mars is the god of war, but also of cultivation. god of death and that which is green."

an irony in itself.

"i have forsaken the gods over the years. but it is time we returned to them, my son."

the yellow eyes were pained, were resolute.