the moon wanes yet i remain Posted on December 1, 2023 at 03:01:48 AM by Canis
🌙
'Picked clean by the vultures and crows."
The sentence begins to reverberate in the back of his mind. Canis can feel something, some emotion maybe, seeping from the black stallion standing next to him. For a moment longer, the silver grullo watches him before looking back to the pale-tressed mare. Dread pooled in his gut then like ice water. He saw her lips form the words more than he heard them: 'Solomon killed Rougaru.' Then, he went numb. An aura obscured his vision as the image of crows plucking out his sire's eyes materialized in his mind's eye.
If he could throw up, he would have.
Instead, Canis stands stock still, the shock lingering on the pale lines of his face. His father was dead: murdered and left to rot. As gruesome as this news was, the questions began to trickle into the grullo's brain. When had this happened? How long did it take for.. -- the question was interrupted almost immediately by a more pressing one. If Rougaru was dead, had been dead, then what had happened to his mother and sister? This roused Canis from the tilt-a-whirl of grief, anger, and horror in his head. He had to focus on anything other than the feasting crows that would surely visit his nightmares.
He was trying to remain calm, but the words nearly poured out of him. "When did it happen? Do you know what happened to his mares? My mother, my - our -" he corrects himself mid-sentence "sister are there. At least they were.." Why hadn't he said goodbye? Why hadn't he gone back sooner? He could have known sooner or done something. Had something happened to them, too? Canis cast his gaze in the direction of where he felt the island of Salem lay. He had to find them. He had to make sure they were protected.