Falls

Several moments of hard silence passed between the brothers. Oberyn lifted his head from the water and turned his gaze apprehensively to Damascus above him on the banks. He could not read his twin’s expression. His ears twisted to the sides as he tried to hide his own emotions, which seemed to lay in a tangled knot in his chest, too complicated to sift through and understand just then. There was a roaring in his ears, and he could not tell if it was his own blood rushing through his head, or the river tumbling around his hooves. His gold eyes shifted from the dark form of his brother back down to the boiling stream. His own reflection melted shapelessly on the surface of the moving water, too disrupted by the current to stare back at him. But in his mind’s eye, he could see the face in the water, as clearly as if he were looking into the still surface of a pool. The gold eyes bored into his own, and Oberyn could not be certain with whom his gaze was locked: himself, his brother, or their dead father.

A whisper passed over the imagined reflection, scattering it like ashes down the river, and Oberyn looked up from his trance. Damascus was still staring at him, but he had said something while his twin was distracted. Oberyn blinked, and the fog in his head cleared a bit.

Why are you here, brother? Damascus had said.

Oberyn didn’t answer right away. Truthfully, he did not entirely understand why he was here. At least, not here specifically - he had left home for a clear reason, but he could not understand what had brought him to this island. He hadn’t made the conscious decision to go anywhere in particular, but knowing the direction Damascus had taken when he left their home, he should have at least had the sense to avoid the same path. But he hadn’t thought about it, and somehow, he had ended up here.

”I just wanted to be free of that place,” he said finally. ”So I left, and the ocean made the decisions for me after that. What an… unfortunate coincidence.” The last statement was spoken softly, without cruelty. Oberyn certainly felt like a cursed creature to have washed up at the hooves of his only enemy, but he was too tired to be angry anymore. And… part of him, deep down, knew that Damascus was facing the same curse. Oberyn wanted to believe that it delighted his brother to see him suffer, to give him opportunity to torment his twin, but he could not deny the pain in Damascus’s quiet voice when he questioned him. Neither twin wanted to face the other - but that was a truth that Oberyn was unwilling to accept just yet. He could not bring himself to admit that he almost sympathized with Damascus, for having the source of his many years of torment dumped unceremoniously upon his doorstep.

But it was getting harder to bury those thoughts. It was only made worse when Damascus wordlessly lead him into the shadow of a towering pine, surrounded by summer’s lush green grass. The sun was slung low in the sky, casting everything in a peach-colored glow, hazing the lines of his brother’s form in front of him. Oberyn also declined to speak, and he avoided his twin’s gaze. Normally, he would have met the identical golden eyes with smoldering ferocity, but he did not have the conviction - or the energy - to do so now. So he let Damascus take him to shelter, with his head lowered and ears splayed passively to the sides. His salt-stiffened tail swayed at his hind legs, pulling up pine needles and depositing them in his short feathers.

At the trunk of the pine tree, Oberyn let his body lean against the rough bark. He didn’t want to fold his injured leg beneath him, and then struggle to rise without its support, so he cocked it slightly and let himself relax standing up. He glanced at his brother before lowering his head to sleep; the other stallion was lingering, but Oberyn knew he would turn away and rest elsewhere.

”I think I might have died if I hadn’t washed up here,” he said before Damascus turned away. It was true - the ocean was vast, and this was probably the only island for miles. If Oberyn hadn’t been cast onto this particular shore, he might have expired at sea waiting for some other land mass to come over the horizon. What were the gods playing at? What kind of coincidence was this? What kind of fate, if that’s what it was, awaited the twins in their reunion?

It was too much to think about. ”I’m not sure if that might have been better,” Oberyn said tiredly. ”It would have spared us both some pain.” With that, he let his eyes shut and his head drop down. He would confront their situation in the morning when his head was clearer.