He had thought himself dead, and he had wandered as one of the lost. And yet, in this new world, he felt something suspiciously like hope rustle in the ashes of his heart. A small spark, easily extinguished with by a breeze’s blow – but it was there, and he guarded it jealously.

But he knew, in that way of his, that he could not return to what he had been. That wolf had been slaughtered by his brother, over a game of gods gone awry.

Flametongue had murdered Winterfang, retribution for his own original slaying. And now there was only Elysium left, unwilling to even utter his family’s name – because he was not fire. He was ashes, so white they might have been snow.

Ashes, bones, and a dragging limp that drew the scarred skin across his left hind leg taut and painful. And scratchy – it always itched, but he could only needle at it with his teeth, lest he tear the still-recovering flesh.

No, he had smashed against the ground at the bottom of that wretched mountain, and he had used the battered parts to craft a new vessel that he might pour his soul into. He could never be what he once was – you always lost splinters when something broke. But he could be something better, perhaps.

What naivety he had fostered for so long, drawn on by the desperate hope his brother might be alive, that he might not be a murderer, had in turn been killed by that same brother. His own blood. His own name. So he would forsake all of that – reassemble a creature called Elysium from only the best of his parts.

No more Winterfang. No more Flametongue. No more memories of a forest blanketed by snow and the way they struggled as children to plow through it.

No more allowing others to pierce the depths of his heart and shatter him anew.


tags: heika
words: 320
notes: you ok there bud