sorrow drips into your heart through a pinhole
#1
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_____It was easy to hang around Esper Hollow, almost easier than hanging around with Inferni. Both places had family in them and both places had a quiet air about them, though Inferni was most definitely the stiffer of the two places. The sense of the openness got to her occasionally, especially with the way she came and went and the way that no one seemed to really care. It was as though they had no care about their own security from the outside world. Sometimes she stopped in every day, sometimes a few days got away from her before she came back. But what had been distributed amongst the ill seemed to be finally taking some effect. She didn't believe it would last long in their systems, but as long as she continued to come around and as long as Endymion stayed up on what he was doing, the worrying had started to slip away.


_____It was easier to sleep at night knowing that they weren't suffering nearly as bad as they could have been or had been. Jasper though, she was worried about. He didn't seem to react one way or the other and all he wanted was his mother. Corona certainly hoped that Matinee wouldn't suddenly spin up from the earth and show up at his bedside. It would have pleased Jasper, but not her and she doubted at this point it wouldn't go over too well with Ahren. He didn't need that aggravation, however (un)pleasant it was. Stepping lightly into the camp site, she once again found it quiet and empty, devoid of her father for now, and therefore she directed her attention to the shack and ventured in.

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#2
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He wanted to leave. At that point in time, it was the only thing he wanted. Unfortunately, it just wasn't that easy. For one, didn't even know the lands he was in. The forest beyond the shack and its immediate surroundings was foreign and strange, uninviting. He knew there was fog, and he hated it. He could tell which direction was north, but he had no idea where they were in relation to where he wanted to be. He didn't know how far it was either. So he remained in the shack even though it wasn't raining outside at the moment. He stayed where the sickness still seemed to linger because it had become familiar. The twisted blankets and the tiny corner had been his entire world for how long? A month? Vaguely, he couldn't help but feel that he'd been cheated out of a long-awaited death once again.



Laruku looked up when the door opened, eyes open, alert, but taking in nothing. Unfortunately, the dead air inside and the still humidity outside meant there was no wind to carry a scent to him. A sixth sense of "presence" only took him so far. He knew it wasn't Ahren and he knew it wasn't Rachias. That only narrowed it down to everyone else in the pack, most, people he didn't know, and any strangers that were just happening by. He betrayed no sign of frustration though; after all, it wasn't as if identity would remain a mystery for long. Friendly parties generally introduced themselves. Malicious parties... well. It wasn't like he was trying too hard to avoid death. Hello, he offered simply, leaning back against the wall.
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#3
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_____This time things were definitely different on the inside of the shack, at least for one of the inhabitants there. She was surprised to see Laruku was alert compared to how they all had been, but it was a step in the right direction. That went without saying that she didn't catch the difference about him as she pulled the door closed behind her, noting that glazed look in his eyes that she had seen a few other times before. If he was blind, what did that mean for Jasper? “Hey,” she returned softly, casting a passing glance to her sibling, “Looks like you're feeling better.” Just as much as his blindness was a surprise (an unpleasant one at that), she wondered if her presence would be found that way as well.


_____Settling down on the floor nearby, she let out a sigh. “I was worried for a while there that maybe you wouldn't get better,” Corona went on to say, imagining that at any rate, there would be something negative to come out of that somewhere. She knew what he had said to Rachias and regardless of whether or not he had been in his right mind, it had just been one thing of many that had been upsetting. And now she was avoiding Rachias, quite sure that she didn't want anything to do with any of them.

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#4
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So it was Corona. He didn't really remember having spoken to her in the passing days, but he had known that she was around one way or another. Once again, he couldn't remember anymore the last time he'd seen her, the last time they'd spoken. He couldn't remember what they'd said, whether it had been good or bad. Someone was laughing at him again, quietly, just outside of his vision; he was like a damned old man, with more pockets in his memory than scars on his body. Useless and blind and prone to trumpeting about the apocalypse and insisting on the ultimate meaninglessness of everything. Laruku couldn't help but join in the laughter, Looks like I am.



The empty laugh turned into a lopsided half-grin, and he shrugged. Shouldn't have worried, he told her, I may as well be immortal. It sure felt like it, anyway, and perhaps he had somehow inherited Prometheus's eagle. He looked in the direction her voice had come from, And how've you been?
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#5
*has no idea where her attention span and brain have gone today, cries over tiny post*
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_____And there it was, that little bristle of negativity. Though it provoked an unseen, brief smile to pass across her face, Corona let it slide. Maybe he was immortal, maybe they were all a little immortal with the way that they had survived death so many times. Her father, her mother, they both could have fit into that, she supposed. “I've been getting by,” she finally returned, reaching up to fiddle passively with her necklace. “My brother's bird found me after the fire happened and eventually got the point across that I should come back. So… here I am, again.” She didn't sound overly happy about it like the last time they had talked, but it went without saying. How many times had they all been pulled away and flung back? “I finally got to meet Rachias too. She's a good kid,” and they were so very much alike in a few aspects.
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#6
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It was one of the first things he had come to accept, back when he had just started that long train of accepting things he couldn't change. People came and went; they came back, they left forever. They had never been his to control, so in the end, what was there to really dwell on? A memory, a voice -- things that disappeared if left alone long enough, but spotty as his recollection had become, Laruku may very well remember just about everything. Every whisper and breath, every word and bitter tone. Every conversation, every person. The curse wasn't the memory; the curse was the immortality. It would seem as if Clouded Tears had decided on irony in the end and given him the opposite.



She is, he agreed easily and immediately, I wish more of her family were still around. Of course, almost the entirety of Inferni was technically her family, but even they were few and scattered. And those that were left, well. Grateful as he'd been to Gabriel, Corona was perhaps the only one he'd trust anymore.
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#7
I suck. :/

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He appreciated her at least, which made Corona feel a little better. Rachias clung to him like she had once clung to Ahren and at least for her sake, Corona hoped that he never pushed her away. “Me too,” she said, remembering easily that they had only pulled the links out of the chain so recently. Andrezej had been a bad seed though, she tried to reckon with that. “Sometimes I wished more of my family was around too, on both sides.” She would have loved to see her mother once more, even if her mother didn't recognise her at all. Even if she wouldn't take her back for being the one who went astray. But Corona didn't dwell on the things she usually missed. “Do you need anything?” She pushed ahead to what she was really there to do, to help them. To try and fix them even if they didn't want it.
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#8
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Rather than push his daughter away, Laruku would prefer if he could simply disappear, or find her someone else to latch onto. But really, part of him already regretted allowing her to grow attached -- if he could have just let her hate him, if he could have just let her find her way, then things would be easier. If she had to lose her entire family, so stand on her own, then so be it. He knew she was strong; if she losing everyone would have allowed her to find someone else, then wasn't that for the better? The coyotewolf was not reliable, and in the end, he was probably just selfish. He knew what was better for everyone, but maybe the truth was just that he needed someone to still love him. He needed her more than she really needed him.



Family, that thing he'd never really had. He supposed he wanted more of them to be around too. Sometimes he wondered what his real, blood siblings would have been like if they had lived. Sometimes he wondered where those of his long lost adoptive litter had gone. Sometimes. But most of the time, he didn't. For the most part, they had never been there, and it just didn't matter anymore. His father, his mother. Ghosts in the night that he may or may not have met. A long time ago, he would have given anything to have known them, but now, they seemed entirely trivial. Unimportant in every way. He didn't know if he cared, if he wanted them, if he needed them at all. Maybe it was why he'd grown up broken. Maybe not.



No, he said with a lazy half-shrug, I don't need anything. He closed his eyes so he didn't need to pretend to look in the right direction. Do you?
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