The Other Past
The Other claws at the black stone, gouging shards she nudges to the side, spinning to repeat the motion. Once there’s a jagged protective rim all around her, she curls within it, grunting softly.
A signal for her young to move close.
Allume doesn’t shift from where she’s coiled in a knot against the burrow’s wall, looking out on the ribbonless sky.
Her gaze traces the fluttery motions of two young Moonplumes flicking through the crisp air like a dance, so luminous against the velvet black.
Youths of similar size, chests full of energy they only ever burn through once the ribbons have long since fallen.
For a long moment, The Other watches, heart heavy.
Certain there’s nothing she wouldn’t do to make Allume’s wings work as they should.
Make the small one strong enough to lift her into the sky so she can play beneath the moons, feel the push of a rushing breeze and the thrill of a tight-tucked plummet.
If she could, she’d sever her own and gift them to her, despite knowing Allume’s on her own journey. That the argent light that’s given her life will only ever be … temporary. A shooting star she’ll nurture with everything she is until fate splits their paths again.
The Other makes a keening sound.
Allume finally uncoils. Tail dragging, she moves close and clambers up the rim, stretching her wings for balance. As always, she topples to her heavy side.
The Other binds her tail around her young and tucks her close, sweeping her beneath the mighty shelter of her wing, cutting Allume’s view of the sky.
Not a punishment.
If she doesn’t, Allume will fall into slumber sadly, as she has before. Looking out on moons she believes she’ll never nest beside, watching the others play rather than feeling how cherished she is.
Despite her busty honk of disapproval, Allume softens, nuzzling down, her big eyes shadowed by long, sleepy blinks. She releases a yawn so wide the tiny bud of blue flame is visible at the back of her throat, then nudges her head against The Other’s luminous hide, seeking comfort.
All outside noises fade as The Other dims her light and fans her wing, encasing Allume, shifting her head so she can survey the burrow’s entrance. And she waits … for longer than she usually does.
By the time the soft thud of footsteps feed into the burrow, The Other is tight with worry that something’s wrong.
Elluin moves through the entrance with her hands fisted at her sides, boasting a new haircut that makes her look a little older than her twelve phases, framing her moonlit face. Still soft with youth, but tight with—
Anger?
Hurt?
The Other goes still.
If something has hurt her Little One, its remaining heartbeats are few. The Other will hunt this foe down, rip its skin from its bones, then feed its soft meat to her young. She’ll feast on what’s left, then boast its blood for many rises.
She.
Will.
Rage.
Elluin doesn’t look up as she bundles her fur-lined garb and clambers over the nest’s rim, past The Other’s crimping wing, and eases deep into her protective embrace. She wedges around Allume and tucks amongst her tendrils, going still.
After watching for a beat, The Other nudges close and takes Elluin’s scent, blowing a puff of air against the soft skin at the back of her neck.
“I’m tired,” she says, voice emptier than parts of the sky.
The Other tilts her head to the side, wondering if her Little One got hurt when her hair was chopped. Cutting so much of one’s self away must surely be … painful?
She doesn’t like to use their bond to pry into the things Elluin feels in her chest, but given this unusual behavior, she considers it justified.
She opens herself, flooded with an icy gush of—
Sorrow.
Growling, The Other nudges Elluin so hard that even Allume stirs before binding into a tighter knot, giving her Little One no choice but to tilt back.
The Other huffs on Elluin’s face until she opens her eyes and looks up. The moment their gazes meet, Elluin’s face crumbles.
“My brother. He—” She squeezes her lids shut, releasing twin tears as she holds her breath, like she’s trying to suffocate the sadness.
Again, The Other nudges her.
When Elluin opens her eyes again, there’s anger in there, fueled with a blue flame of hurt. “He told me he wished I left him there to die,” she bites out past trembling lips. “He never talks anymore—not once since we got back from Netheryn—and those are the words he chose?”
It’s only when Allume makes a sharp keening sound that The Other realizes her young is awake. Probably feeling the same hurt, given she never sees her bonded; so broken he can’t move from his nest in the big black spiky home where Elluin’s blood resides.
Times like this, The Other wishes she spoke the same tune as her Precious Little One. If she did, she’d tell her what she knows: that her elder blood, broken as he is, won’t always feel this way.
He will know happiness again.
The Other tightens her tail around both Elluin and Allume. Cradled close, they tuck together like two halves of a small moon as The Other rumbles through her breaths—a lulling sound that eventually has its desired effect, pulling both youngs into a quiet slumber.
But The Other doesn’t sleep. Not with her entire world bundled beneath the vast shield of her wing, the weight of their sadness heavy on her chest. Instead, she looks out on the dark sky lit by her nesting brethren; those who have found their eternal sleeping spot above it all.
Not for the first time, she considers that silver ribbon that splashed against her all those rises ago. Both a bounty and a curse to be bonded with the ebb and flow of a fate that flies in one direction, never slowing. Especially in moments like this, when she wishes time would still.
Even weighted by the sadness of her loved ones, being able to comfort them is a treasured gift. Because these opportunities are precious few, and they won’t always fit together as they do right now. Nor will they always have each other.
But they do have this moment.
This now.
And so The Other binds tight, knowing this protective ache is the penance of love, savoring each beat that drips by too fast.