Chimera Fields a crime so old as the sky and bone

For a prolonged moment, Cypress was silent, digesting the changes in his brother and — more poignantly — the changes in himself. He wasn’t angry anymore. The gnawing guilt remained and would likely always be part of him, but he didn’t harbor any resentment toward his brother or jealousy regarding the turquoise-eyed male’s former affinity with their erstwhile companion. Licking his lips, he endured his brother’s gaze with a mixture of compassion and regret. “Wasn’t nothin’, Noch,” he absolved his littermate quietly, a tinge of their mother’s accent softening the hard consonants. “I don’t think anything back then was fair.” Back then. A sudden grin, rare and ephemeral, played about the rightmost corner of Cypress mouth and was gone. “I do love you,” he said frankly. “That was the one thing — I wish I’d yelled it or chased you down to tell you. I was so worried — ” His voice broke in an embarrassing way.

“I was worried because I was just thinking…I couldn’t remember the last thing I said to mama or paw, and I didn’t want the last thing we said to be something bad.” Regaining his composure, “I learned that cowards come in all shapes and sizes,” he admitted ruefully. “Maybe some of them run away,” his eyes flicked without malice toward his brother, “but others…they just stay in one place because they’re too afraid to move.” Cypress swallowed hard as his sulphureous eyes met Rannoch’s for the first time in months; with quiet strength he maintained his lantern yellow stare, for an entirely different reason than he had with Ondine. “I missed you every day,” he intoned, his breath uneven and a little shaky. “Maybe you can’t trust that, but it’s the truth. You’re my brother, Noch.”