The little fawn-coloured kid didn’t flinch when he reached for them, but instead had the looseness of resignation- a different kind of rebellion, one that made him pull back without touching (maybe a little too fast- he could feel Anathema’s weighted stare on him). As if to flout his uncharacteristic hesitancy, they let his warnings slide off them and brazenly braced up against the fawn’s hip, nudging them ashore without reserve. And the fawn let them, staggering out of the water wearily.

At Anathema’s… Offer, however, Heartbreak put his foot down. Literally. Figuratively, it was more of a failed effort. The fawn-eyed kid turned their face up to his sibling before their eyes tracked away, and Heartbreak moved to step between them until the smaller answered by collapsing into the sand with a soft fwump just past the reach of the surf, pausing before making a sweeping arc of their nose, motioning around them in what seemed to be a counter-offer. Anathema’s eyes slid up to him, and though their face was as impassive as ever, he thought he could see a smug glint in them- before they, too, curled their legs up beneath them, shuffling themself into the sand, curling around and under the little doe-eyed kid.

Heartbreak was pretty sure that wasn’t what their new urchin friend had had in mind, and the muscles of his jaw were standing out from his head with the desire to say something loud and crude in response, but he knew it was pointless. If the doe wanted something done about it, he would, but there was no use trying to get his sibling to do something they didn’t want to unless he was willing to use force.

“What’s your name?”

Speak of the devil. He squinted his good eye at them with a heaping dash of judgment, but they were focused on the little deer again. “They don’t talk, idiot,” he finally snapped, fed up with being ignored. “You didn’t think they talked,” Anathema corrected blandly without missing a beat, still fixated on the fawn’s small soft face, their tawny fur dark and gleaming with seawater, gold against Anathema’s silver.

“I’m Anathema.” They waited, the silence pointed, and though they had eyes only for the kid pressed against their side, Heartbreak got the feeling this pause was aimed at him. Out of spite, he let it stretch long enough that his sibling’s dark ear shifted toward him and he saw their shoulders begin to tense, at which point he grudgingly grunted, “…Heartbreak.” Resigning himself, he thumped noisily down into the sand, not on the fawn’s other side but in front of them, mumbling again, more quietly, still all gravel and broken glass, “I’m Heartbreak.” Lowering his head a little when he realized he was still having to look down at them, he added,

“You got one?”