Meadow

“Tell me brother,” words leave the mouth of the darker brother, his head angled away from his redder sibling and the familiar face he knew too well that often reminded Snow of their mother; the resemblance was uncanny. “What exactly do you or I hope to find here in these lands once more?’, his tone takes an accusing tone, as if blaming the older male for the very reason they find themselves on familiar yet also at the same time very unfamiliar lands. Snow’s ears are slanted back and nostrils flaring, his usual expression that their mother had often teased him about. Smooth those lines my little night, or else your face will get stuck.

The memory is brief but enough for Snow to exhale and relax his hardened features just a tad, not enough to ease up on his brother but just enough to where he was sure his mother’s warning wouldn’t actually take place. His dark eyes move over the land, ripe with potential yet all Snow could think about was his stupid brother and the fact they had nothing to their names. They had someone once, or at least Yoren did; as always leaving Snow to pick up whatever pieces he could find to feel somewhat included. She too was gone, just as their mother was, a gentle soul lost to the lands and all the miserable bastards had were each other in the end. Everyone who loved them always left.

“Mother would have loved to come back,” a bitter subject but mutual ground on which the siblings stand; perhaps the reason they kept near to the other. They did it for her. Before he can stop himself, or his subconscious mind can speak reason, Snow reaches out for his standoffish brother for the first time in a while but he falls short of brushing his whiskered mouth against his pale shoulder. Snow adverts his attention away, looking out over the meadow at the mingling faces, none of which hold his interest very long. “I think even ‘she’ would have liked it here brother,” he is reminiscing, an odd brief grin there as he thinks of the girl who’d had them both wrapped around her hooves, and even in death continued to have them, or at least still had Snow hung on her. He often thought of what could have been, if maybe he had pursued her more so than admitting defeat.

Maybe she’d be alive and with them still.