Hushed Willows like eating glass

set loosely for the 20th/21st - tags for ref

@Ibis had left--but okeanos, still beset with a terrible foreboding, goes after her. he tells @Mal, hoping the silvery boy might know where ibis went, but in the end he just follows instinct, finding himself moving in the direction of elysium. maybe the heightened tension in the air makes him want to check in on his moms, like he told himself he'd eventually do. maybe it's just a lucky guess, catching snippets of ibis' scent every so often like a lifeline. 

he moves quickly, hoping to catch up to her before getting to his former home. fate has other ideas--in more way than one. the world is uncannily silent, the sun thinning into the horizon as okeanos reaches the faded borders of the willows. he shivers, the stale scent of the border alarming, the absence immediately noticeable. where is sunny or cortez, where are his siblings, surely old enough now to bumble around, where are his mothers, for that matter? the willows offer implications but no concrete answers, and he can smell ibis too, ibis and a stranger, though where exactly they are  or how long ago they were here he can only guess at.

terrance had warned them when they'd left lost hollow creek that he might not be there when they deigned to come back. somehow, it'd never occured to him that the same could be true of elysium, or his mother. outloud he says, "i'm sorry," his voice a mournful keen.