[In one reality, Hayame is slumped against the walls of an icy staircase, her breathing labored and her blood staining the ground, clasping the hand of the war god in ripped robes kneeling in front of her. But in another, in the world of communion... she is standing alone with hot desert wind rustling through her long hair (ink black but for the single strands of crimson) as he leaves her to walk over the sand towards a grand temple... and the small, wailing thing that comes racing out of it.
How strange is it, that she could face her own doppelganger and primarily feel rage, yet now find herself paralyzed with fear?
His son is small and pathetic, not at all what she imagined when she thought of the child of a god. Even if it were not a son of his loins... she had assumed him still divine from some way or form, and to see such a being sniffling and sobbing over the return of his father... How is it familiar? Ah. The hands clasping in the brilliant hair remind her of when she had. The bolas had been tangled around her fetlocks, then, her lungs heaving, struggling on the ground and capture imminent, but she had seen it clearly- the young son of Matsukaze whose life that proud, strong man had gotten on the ground and begged her for (that she had coldly refused), throwing his arms in tears around his father when they were reunited. How Matsukaze had wept openly, then, too, when he had never cried when her men beat him or when she'd bound him to drag him back to her stablemaster in fetters.
But that child, half his face ruined by melted, burned skin, had not looked at her like this one ("Anubis") does, when Set finally calls his attention to her. - My friend. Had he just called her his friend? No, it was surely just... something one said to children, to explain the presence of strangers. Something to make the child look at her with curiosity and wonder in his teary eyes more than the sheer hatred and fear she'd seen in Matsukaze's son towards the people who had taken his father away. What-
What did she say? When her younger brother had come to her crying she had slapped him, shaken him, half smothered him in her side, anything to keep the sounds of his weakness from being overheard by the other armed jinba or the grooms, who might tell the stablemaster and not only ruin Yubari's chances at success but her own by association. But Set, he... embraces it. Encourages it. And she cannot run from it, the sand is heavy on her hooves, even though something sticks in her throat that prevents her from responding until she can finally force out-]
Hello, Anubis.
[- What did that feel like? Not the false sensation Yima had once put into her head, but the actual arms of a parent embracing you when you were small and sad and powerless? It should be disgusting, what she is seeing. But instead, for some reason... it makes her hearts ache, the rest of anything that she might have said lost, unable to turn her gaze away from the child back to its father.]
sobs and takes it
How strange is it, that she could face her own doppelganger and primarily feel rage, yet now find herself paralyzed with fear?
His son is small and pathetic, not at all what she imagined when she thought of the child of a god. Even if it were not a son of his loins... she had assumed him still divine from some way or form, and to see such a being sniffling and sobbing over the return of his father... How is it familiar? Ah. The hands clasping in the brilliant hair remind her of when she had. The bolas had been tangled around her fetlocks, then, her lungs heaving, struggling on the ground and capture imminent, but she had seen it clearly- the young son of Matsukaze whose life that proud, strong man had gotten on the ground and begged her for (that she had coldly refused), throwing his arms in tears around his father when they were reunited. How Matsukaze had wept openly, then, too, when he had never cried when her men beat him or when she'd bound him to drag him back to her stablemaster in fetters.
But that child, half his face ruined by melted, burned skin, had not looked at her like this one ("Anubis") does, when Set finally calls his attention to her. - My friend. Had he just called her his friend? No, it was surely just... something one said to children, to explain the presence of strangers. Something to make the child look at her with curiosity and wonder in his teary eyes more than the sheer hatred and fear she'd seen in Matsukaze's son towards the people who had taken his father away. What-
What did she say? When her younger brother had come to her crying she had slapped him, shaken him, half smothered him in her side, anything to keep the sounds of his weakness from being overheard by the other armed jinba or the grooms, who might tell the stablemaster and not only ruin Yubari's chances at success but her own by association. But Set, he... embraces it. Encourages it. And she cannot run from it, the sand is heavy on her hooves, even though something sticks in her throat that prevents her from responding until she can finally force out-]
Hello, Anubis.
[- What did that feel like? Not the false sensation Yima had once put into her head, but the actual arms of a parent embracing you when you were small and sad and powerless? It should be disgusting, what she is seeing. But instead, for some reason... it makes her hearts ache, the rest of anything that she might have said lost, unable to turn her gaze away from the child back to its father.]