Father and the child were no longer speaking, but they sat together in silence. The child was at his feet, and he sat, up in his throne, his eyes on the sky as well.It made her smile. They existed beneath the same stretch of stars. They loved the same night blanket above them.She looked at him, taking the opportunity to relish in his distraction to study him, his midnight hair, his pale body, only barely covered by the cloak, the fur of it distractingly like his hair, his lips just parted enough that his fangs were visible, his deep violet eyes, his long, elegant fingers, stroking the…She swallowed back pain that rose up her throat as she watched Father stroking the boy’s hair. Sitting together like that, the similarities between them were bewitching. She frowned, glancing once, disdainfully at the wavy-haired child with the slanted green eyes, walking to her Father’s throne and bending her knee in a bow.There was a sound like a chuckle, and she looked up at him. He was smiling at her. It warmed the quiet cold in her chest.“Come,” he said in his sonorous voice, and the darkness whispered with it, a thousand voices in varying degrees of age, gender, depth and lifted sweetness, all speaking together. She moved closer to him, sitting where his arm wound around her shoulder, fitting them together like childish toy blocks.
~ Carmen Dominique Taxer
