Moonsong Glacier Dreams of what I once claimed to know.

Do what they least expect... Hydra advised, standing over him while he sank in to the snow. There had not been snow that day. The world had not been so white and clean as this, he knew that this was wrong— And what else?

What else? What if an intruder was still nearby? Those blue eyes brightened to something pine-heavy, the shadow tapering through faces. Jarilo this time; no jealousy in the moment. And what else? Two faces he could distinguish hinged upon one torso, their blackness bleeding out over the glacier.

Where had father gone, he had been here before — where was his laughter?

Don't stray too far, the voice instructed. The shape of @Charon standing at a great wall of ice, now. He couldn't go anywhere with this obstacle before him! Revui looked for an exit point and began to stride, to run, becoming a comet of silver besides.

Abandoned by another. @Hydra?
It's begun to rot, @Jarilo now; green threads weaving overhead.
I think you two can best it. He couldn't tell them apart now.

Two—?

Revui races along the edge of the barricade and does not notice as he rises with each stride, the path winding in to itself, curling like a snail's shell. He is cold and alone, except for his shadow; the jadelight deepens overhead, and the darkness beneath him rises up - twin suns for eyes. Each stride he makes so too does the shadow.

You left us, those eyes said; but he was here now, wasn't he? He was here, running with his brother. Listening to his sister on the wind, climbing the mountain. They were running together—he'd left, but he'd found a way back. It could be as it once was—brothers, as they were meant to be.

As Revui rounded the ice sheet he felt himself miss a step; there was nothing there to support him any longer, just a chasm of blackness, with Arcturus the Shadow spread out before him. Not running now but falling. Head-over-tail between the green and the black.

Teeth in his nape—tiny teeth, barely holding on. He remembers the time that he surprised @Arcturus with a bit of rough-housing and how poorly the boy reacted. In this memory it was the shadow that instigated it; those teeth too small to tear, pressing in to his neck, in to the hot wounds as they split across his body—broken in so many places and yet unable to bleed, emptied already. Held together by the lights.

Arcturus don't— Revui tried to plead, brother, no— but his voice was so small, it hadn't grown up yet. The silence that pervaded their first few months had resurfaced at the end. He mouthed the words and tasted blood instead upon his tongue, and gradually the pressure lifted. The needling released him.

---

Those last few moments were fleeting. Kukutux wept upon him, pressing her face upon his shoulder, losing the last few moments to grief. Her pleading would do no good. Slowly Revui's eyelids drifted open and the dancing lights gleamed, leaving shards of seaglass where once the soul had been.