Chimera Fields long intervals of horrible sanity

“I-It’s my fault they’re dead. It’s all my fault.”

Blame was something Cypress had failed to consider, for the most part. While it was true that his inability to do the impossible and rouse his parents had tasted bitterly of failure, he certainly hadn’t thought to blame Lucy or Rannoch for it. Most accurately, what he felt was survivor’s guilt — and even knowing that Rannoch was alive could not lift that heavy, ever-growing weight from his young shoulders. Tears continued to leak from the boy’s sulphureous eyes and spill down his black velvet cheeks as his composure slowly disintegrated; without the veneer of shock to dull the brunt of his emotions, he felt broken and lost. Retelling the events that haunted him so had torn off any metaphorical scab that had formed — and maybe that was a good thing. Maybe he needed to bleed out the venom. He heard Rannoch’s words but had not the breath to respond to them as his breathing quickened and shortened into a series of gasping sobs. For perhaps the first time in his life, Cypress Benvolio Frostfur was truly and utterly forlorn. Rather than leaning in to his brother, he staggered where he stood until his hindquarters gave out beneath him — he had grown so used to being alone that turning to Rannoch or any other wolf was no longer first nature. Hanging his head, the flood of tears mingling with the blood from his lip and sluicing away the bitter taste of bile from his tongue, he wept. It was not a wailing, gasping, shuddering paroxysm that overtook the wild-furred orphan but an exhausted, tight-lipped surrender as his shoulders shook and his breath stuttered wildly.