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_____After speaking with Laurel, Corona headed back towards the shed to visit Ahren first. It had been a few days since she had seen him, though in reality she had only peeked in on him then. Since he had screamed at her, she hadn't been overly in the mood to try and talk to him at length again, but this time she at least had something to give him. From the mansion she had taken a pillow, figuring it would at least be good enough to give him to alleviate some of the discomfort from having to sleep on the floor. However, when she opened the door to the shed a bit, she noticed that it seemed like Poe had given him all of those things instead. “Hey, Dad?” she called softly into the room, not venturing in just yet because she wanted to find out what exactly his mood was like.
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On the floor, Ahren was laying in the pillows and blankets strewn about. They had been enough to keep him comfortable, and warm, and his sleeping had been easier. The dreams had continued, though. Dream-Ahren had always been comforting, and sometimes they had discussed strange things. Sometimes they played chess. Sometimes Ahren won, and sometimes his dream-self won. They had been involved in one of these when dream-Ahren had pointed behind the blonde, and the clock in the air (there had never been a clock there before) changed.
Corona’s voice drew him out of the dream and he stirred, opening both eyes. The air still smelt like rain, but it wasn’t raining. Shifting his body and turning his head, he smiled faintly and spoke. “Hey.”
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_____He seemed comfortable. The kind of comfortable that she wanted him to be, rather than lying on the dusty floor in some distraught agony that she couldn't fix. His smile drew one out across her face and she slipped inside of the shed, bringing the door to as not to let the rain and the chill that followed it in. “How are you feeling?” she decided to ask him for the first time in a few days. Better, she hoped, but maybe he wasn't himself. Maybe he wasn't really with it at all and she wasn't herself in his eyes. “I brought you a couple of things.” The pillow was useless even though she set it down on the ground, but the second thing she had brought him was the same thing she had been giving out for days. Sinking towards the floor beside him, she brushed her damp bangs out of the way.
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Arching his back and yawning widely, the blonde rolled over onto his back and looked up to the ceiling. The wood had swollen with the end-of-summer rain, and the gaps were less noticeable now. “Yeah,” he said, shutting his eyes and leaning his head back onto one of the pillows. They all smelled like damp earth and musk, but he could barely smell his own scent, so used to it he was. Opening his left eye again, he looked over at the pillow and smiled again, this time broader. “You did now, huh?”
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_____There was no real acknowledgement as to how he felt, but she could tell it was a lot better. Almost anything would have been an improvement over the last time she had seen him, though whether or not it had anything to do with what she or Endymion was giving him was over her head. It could have just been the weather playing hell on their minds. The water washed the blood from the ground and dulled any and every smell there was around. “One thing was a pillow, but I see someone else beat me to the punch,” she answered with a small laugh, then fiddling with her pouch to pull the next thing out. It was a small vial, although a bit more decorative for what it was being used for. Holding it out to him, she went on to explain. “I've been spending a few nights trying to figure out something that will help make everyone feel better. I'm not sure if it will work but the worst it could probably do is nothing at all.”
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Pushing himself up with one arm, Ahren reached out and took the bottle from her. It was curious, the shape and color (though he could not see it) and uncorked it. After a short sniff, he crinkled his nose, then downed the whole bottle in one shot. Though it did not burn with the same warmth as whiskey, it made him shudder and sit up, coughing. “Shit, what did you put in that? Cat piss?” Rolling his tongue over his teeth, clinking the barbell against them, he pushed his hair out of his face and looked at her curiously. Something was different in her eyes—they had changed to another shade of gray. “Did something happen to you?”
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_____His reaction was nothing short of the same one that Talitha had given her over an entirely different substance, but it provoked a wide smile to spread across her face all the same. Maybe that was one of the more beneficial things about studying medicine—if she hung around along enough, she got to see the way everyone's face screwed up when they downed whatever she had given to them. “No cat,” she shrugged with a chortle, taking back the vial for now. It was only a matter of time from there. What he said next, however, wiped her smile from her face and it was her turn to screw up the expression. It seemed like such an absurd question to be asked out of the blue, but it was only the tip of the iceberg. “What do you mean?” But maybe he was just out of his head.
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The reaction proved to him something happened. Cracking his back with another arch, he shook his head and used one hand to comb his hair down, out of his face. “Your eyes,” he explained, lowering his hand and toying idly with the necklace he had not taken off since ripping it from his mother’s bones. “I can’t explain it, but they look different.” His hand fell to the ground, and his eyes remained on her face, waiting for a reaction, an explanation, anything.
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_____Eyes were supposedly the windows to the soul, so in a way it made perfect sense that he would notice something askew when it came to her gaze. The events over the last week or two had been so blurred and fast-paced that she had hardly the time to sift through everything. But it always been at the back of her mind, sitting on the dusty shelves with every other thing she remembered. Corona should have known that he would have seen right through that unless he was worse off than he had been before. “Maybe it's just the lighting,” she offered up instead, “I don't know what's really changed other than the fact that Inferni and Dahlia de Mai aren't at war any longer.” But she was mostly unsure if she wanted to tell him anything anyway, finding it hard to find the words when they hadn't spoken for months.
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She avoided the question, and he knew it had been something terrible. Of course it should be that way. Pushing himself up to his feet, and swaying for a moment, he looked around the mostly-bare room. “I know,” he said, frowning as he realized his things were not with him. “Gabriel told me.” At least, he could remember that. Then the noise had come, at the screaming, the crying, the rain. Looking down at the golden female, he flicked one ear at nothing, annoyed. “Did Laurel take my cigarettes?”
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_____So Gabriel had come to see him. Though it pleased her to know that much, it had also been a weak attempt at trying to keep them altogether. To keep them mindful of one another and aware of the things that were going on. Although at that moment, she wasn't really doing such a keen job of that herself, withholding things that otherwise should have been spoken. She rose up after him, ears perking with interest at such a thing. A week ago he had been crawling the ground trying to get away, but now he was much more mobile. All of it good signs, every single one. It may her want to go and see if Jasper and Laruku were the same. Giving a glance around the room and it's rather haphazardly strewn contents, she didn't spot them outright. “I don't know why he would,” she trailed off, though she didn't know much about the supposed leader of the Hollow outside of a one time meeting. Giving the room another once-over and much slower at that, she spotted them sticking out beneath the edge of a blanket. “There they are.”
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Turning, he followed her eyes and found the container. Bending over, though almost losing his balance, he stuck out a hand and held himself up against the ground. The other grabbed the small pouch and he was up again, smiling thinly as he realized that Laurel had taken away his knife. That much had been the wise choice; who knew how much damage he could have done with that. Moving towards the door, he fumbled with the handle and pulled it open. How many weeks had it taken him to figure that out? How out of it had he been? Heading out into the gray space, he fumbled with the lighter and took a deep drag. After so long, it burnt, but it felt just oh-so-good.
Exhaling into the breeze, he looked up at the sky.“Someone died, didn’t they?” That had been the look in her eyes. That had been the way his eyes had looked after he had killed for the first time.
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_____Though he was a little unsteady on his feet, he moved in such a way that Corona was more transfixed on the difference than what he was doing. It was the recoil from the outside light however that snapped her out of that daze and she followed him hesitantly out into the hazy outdoors. That was another thing that had caught her interest—the foggy landscape. It was eerie and in a sense, almost fitting for their little meetings. Corona kept her eye on him as he lit the cigarette and drew in the first drag off of it, watching the smoke filter and mingle with the fog. But his question made her gaze drop towards the ground, wondering if just when it was that Gabriel had visited. What did he already know? “Yeah, someone did. I guess he was some sibling of mine, I didn't really know him.” Some sibling though, he had deserved to die for what he had done. But it wasn't the tone of voice she had used, Corona almost felt a small tinge of sorrow for him as well. He'd been led astray somewhere, he had lost out on a very major, life-saving point factoid about all of them.
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Both of Ahren’s ears turned back as she spoke, coming outside and joining him. For a long time, he remained silent, content to breath in the nicotine and feel the wind on his face. His messy hair was tumbled by the gusts, but he made no motion to move it. The wind felt good, and he felt more alive then he had in weeks. “One of Kaena’s kids,” he stated blandly, knowing there could be no other option. His children were all long gone, vanished into the wilderness between here and somewhere across the vast ocean.
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_____“Yep,” she said with a long sigh, letting her gaze even out with the landscape. Of course it would be one of her mother's children. It seemed like the only ones who really had brains most of the time were the ones that stayed away for any length of time and didn't manage to get killed. There was always that notion, that feeling of superiority that came from her when it came to her younger siblings, because she felt like she had always captured the best of both worlds. Even though she had never grabbed either world by anything useful, she had transcended between them enough times to get lost on what it was that she was in reality. Wolf or coyote? “His name was Andrezej. He got himself exiled before the fire and only turned up a while ago. Long enough to hurt Talitha while Dahlia de Mai had her. When Gabriel found out, he wanted him dead… Andrezej was stupid enough to turn up in Inferni a few days later.” It was easy to explain it now and by then she had found her voice to talk at length about it. No more sorrow. “He tried to attack Talitha again, but we've all been keeping an eye on her. He never got to lay a finger on her, we took the name he threw around and we took his life.” And he had enjoyed it, he had truly enjoyed it and she wasn't sure if she understood why.
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Vaguely, Ahren remembered Gabriel mentioning these things. He couldn’t remember. Everything had been washed away in the rain, that rain that had droned on for hours and continued even in his dreams. The sky kept turning, shades of gray dancing above their heads, spinning, moving with the wind. Of all the things he missed the most, color was one of them. Being able to see red (and faint shades of yellow) was all that kept him from going completely insane. Otherwise, he supposed he might cut his throat just to see color (though his blood would just be gray, if that was the case).
“Then it’s all right,” he said, lifting the cigarette to his mouth. “He deserved it,” he concluded with an exhale of smoke.
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_____It was a justified mean to an end and that was all there was to it. But she knew that Andrezej had littermates and she knew that one of them was not all that far away taking care of her own father. She knew that Rachias had been there at some point to look over things because she had picked up on her scent on the wind. Rachias had already lost one brother as far as Corona understood and now she had lost the other. Laruku was the only thing that she had, outside of those of them in Inferni. “Faolin came back so now Talitha has been with her. I tried to keep feeling safe and reassured beforehand, but I hope she'll be okay.” A strong family bond would get her through it though, Corona knew this first hand. “Have you met her before?”
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It was good that Gabriel had managed to keep his family together. That was something Ahren had never been able to do. Despite two wars, and whatever else he had gone through, Gabe was strong enough to put his priorities behind those of his family and his clan. That made him better then his father, who had run from both. “No,” he said blandly, sparing her a glance. “I haven’t been near Inferni since the fire.”, That was a bold-faced lie, but she didn’t need to know that. The pact he and his son had made was business only, and belonged to no-one but them.
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_____If he hadn't been to Inferni since the fire, then maybe that had made the meeting between him and Gabriel all the more important in her eyes. She wasn't really sure when it was that Talitha and her absent brother had been born, but the fact that they were almost half-grown (or thereabouts) told Corona a lot about how things had gone down. She wouldn't have been surprised to know if they had been born right on the eve that she had chosen to venture away from all of them. “You should meet her sometime,” Corona said with a faint smile. “She's… cute, I suppose you could say. Looks just like Gabe, but with red eyes.” Whether or not they had come out of the de le Poer line or from her mother, she hadn't decided.
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He made a noise in response to her suggestion, and then looked down to his feet. “Sometime,” he echoed, flicking ash from the cigarette. “Jasper wants to meet her too.” That had been one of the things he could remember his son asking him about. Jasper had always been curious about this mystery family, after finding them on the coast. Back when he was still a boy, and still lost in the world. He was not much changed, of course, but still.
A radical idea hit him, and Ahren let out a laugh. “It was my birthday a few days ago,” he said, judging this from the weight in his bones.
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