Phantom Hollow oh, who is she?

It was so quiet here.

Nothing but the distant thud of some creature or other, the leaves rustling under her feet. Her own heartbeat, if she cared to listen to it. Her chest ached, little spikes of agony like barbed wire wrapped tight around her ribs. Emotions stifled, yet melting into reality with every step.

Her mother was dead.

She’d fought with the woman more often than she’d loved her, taken everything for granted, and then tried to save her at the last moment. It didn’t work.

It never worked.

Metis the Firestarter, Metis the traitor, Metis the betrayed, walked a path all her own through the silent wood, eyes locked on her feet.

He had not been back here in a very long time.

How strange now, to walk the paths he'd only known as a boy. A man now, at least, on the cusp of it. Nearly grown into paws once too big for him - and yet, their size told him there was still a way to go towards the sky for him yet.

Melaneus watched the quiet woods, treading ever lightly, a bloodied reaper of gigantic form. And he saw her walking, with eyes downcast and fixed on the ground.

Familiarity stirred.

He cupped his ears forward.

Watching.

There were eyes on her.

That familiar prickle up the back of her spine, a loving friend to the girl that had none, drove her to halt her progress. Her tail twitched, the rustle of fur almost too loud in the deep quiet of the wood.

Metis raised her head up, feeling the overused muscles throb with the effort of holding her neck. She turned, discerning eyes finding him in the dark, and she could only snort at the irony. A reaper and a ghost, staring at each other, before one escorted the other to death’s door.

Her nose twitched, inhaling a scent she recognized in the same way she vaguely recognized the wilds she stood in. The briefest impression of brothershadow.

Her head tilted.

Name? Hellfire still on her tongue, im her throat, rasping her voice and burning in her stomach.

She felt him.

He could tell by that all telling rise of fur, how she turned without command to turn, eyes painted of lavender he could almost smell. Draped in winter furs, she had the disadvantage over him -- but she was just as perceptive and that made up for what she lacked.

He flared his nostrils to catch her scent. It hovered like a spectre long forgotten.

Her voice, too, like flames unattended, and now barely breathing.

He was quiet a moment. Dark eyes static and unmoving. Then, Oi Kryfoi, he settled on for her, a name just as lost as each of them had become, if he truly did stare a memory in the face.

She stared into the ink black looking back at her as though defying death himself. She rolled the joints off her paws, rocking from battle ready to casual on a whim.

Then, death opened a creaking jaw, and spoke a name long dead. Her voice came out in a hideous snort from somewhere deep in her nose. Turning from a wheeze to a cackle, so hard it hurt. She knew this one, just as much as she knew herself. The shadows of Oi Kryfoí lingered over them both.

Melaneus.

A brother she had not seen since they were both the same size, now in front of her.

She became a banshee at the rumble of his voice, shrill, sharp, and rising from a place deep, deep, deep, and long buried. Unnerving. The birds scattered from the trees, a cacophany of crowsong, and though Melaneus glanced towards them, he remained impassive, save for the flicker of a smile along the dark lines of his jaw.

Though cushioned in mania, his name on her tongue refreshed him like the moon on a clear night. When was the last time he'd heard anyone say it? How strange, to hear it now.

Metis, he said - his sister who seemed to have shrunk in every way he'd grown. Who was more alive, heartbeating, than all of his memories had consigned her to be. I thought you dead.

And I you.

Melaneus was far taller than her, sitting at the other end of a spectrum. She had to look up at him, something the hellspawn she once was would have rankled at. Now, it just made dull bitterness nest in her chest alongside the pain.

They hadn’t seen each other grow up.

I guess a lot’s happened, huh? Mother, her, the moon chasing the sun, Skoll and Hati chasing them. A ghost and a reaper in the dark wood.

Her own betrayal to everything she knew. But she did not drop that bombshell.

Not yet.

They both though each other dead. We are even, then, he said, loosing his smile just a little more. No apologies to be made for not looking for the other - though, Melaneus would be lying if he ever said he had not kept his eyes open for her at all. At every turn he had, as he'd kept his eyes open for the rest of them. But he had not found them, and after a while, it was easier to live if you simply never expected to find them at all. But I'm glad you are not.

How much had happened? His childhood blurred together like the endless fog of Shade wood. Had she or Lycabas been the first to leave? Had he found Starflower begore or after? Even the things that followed got muddled in the mess the Crows had made him.

Yes, he mused, we are both alive, and now, we are both here. Indeed, a lot has happened.

There had been something weighty threading his sister's words. He was sure she would feel it in his own.

And what has happened to bring you back? fully expecting she might answer by turning the question back on him.

He asked the one question she did not want to answer. She inhaled, feeling it rattle in her nose. Her eyes closed for a moment, then opened to take in her brother again.

Our mother. Nervous tremors, tremors of pain, they quaked up her legs, threading across her back until she was a quavering ball of flesh and memories.

She’s dead. Because of me was not something she said, but it lingered there, behind her teeth, beneath her tongue. Metis looked away, unable to observe the impact of her words.

I came back to..I don’t know. I don’t have anywhere else to go. The Myrmidons wouldn’t accept her anymore, she was sure.

Dead.

Mother, dead.

A slow blink, as his sister shook, crumbled, no longer set her gaze upon him but turned away to face the empty behind her. His black eyes stared back.

Mother.

Dead.

Dead.

Mother.

Oh.

He had walked with death before. He had touched it, and Metis words hung open like a grave, like skeletons wrestling to climb out and break free, but she piled on the dirt before the dead could see the day.

Mother. Dead. He had counted her dead, too, like he had counted his sister, still counted his brother and father. But unlike Metis, their mother was actually cold and gone and packed six-feet-under.

Oh.

There was something he should say here, he knew it, but he stayed his silence and imstead, slowly shrunk the space that separated him from his sister.

We are in like company, then he said, softer. Mother, dead. Dead, mother, I've death behind me, too, but the Crows would not come this far to find him, we could find somewhere to go together. Maybe somewhere sunny for once.

The sun, the antithesis of who she was. Metis was a thief, a rogue, she always had been from the moment she realized what the word meant.

She wanted the sun on her fur so viscerally in that moment she could feel the phantom warmth.

No more hiding. She extended a foreleg, holding back every tear she wanted to cry.

Let’s find somewhere sunny. Perhaps it was stupid, to trust a brother she no longer knew as her own, but she so desperately wanted to believe in a happy world where they could just exist.