"i know my sister like i know my own mind -"

Instructions

feeling hamiltony enough to do this :) hemlock (right) and coot (left), characters in my warriors fanfic of stars and sights. --EXCERPT-- They laid her out to rest by morning light. Coot was lighter than Linden had expected - nearly nothing at all, a small bundle of fur and bones, her muscles already stiffening in the first stages of rigor mortis. She looked frailer than she ever had been, as if a mere wind would be able to carry her soulless form to where it belonged in the skies. It was as if all the fight had gone out of her. Gone was the firm grip, the fire, the fury that raged under blackened depths, leaving only ash and silence to smoulder and cool upon the sleepless sands. Midday felt colder than it ever had been. The sky was blue and brilliantly so, letting in the rays of the universe: frost blades white and sharp, as pure as distilled mercury and as cold as severed venom, raining down on the world in a haze of light and glory. Linden cried; Hemlock did not. Linden wanted to shout at him. Why did his brother have to be so calm, so impassive, as if lack of feeling is a sign of control? Linden had bawled his eyes out many times in the last few days, but Hemlock just nodded to every death, accepted them, and just... went on with things. As if the passing of his mother and sister meant nothing to him. As if family is nothing but a group of random cats stuck together by chance. As if he didn't even care. A heart of stone, that was what Hemlock was. There was never grief or sympathy in those cold green eyes, and the only things ever conveyed by the windows of his mind were malice and fury. Don't you have the least bit of heart in you? Linden wanted to scream. Don't you know that this is your mother and your sister, cats who had loved you more than anything in their lives? Don't you care about them? Do you have to disregard their deaths just for your own pride? He kept his mouth shut, because Hemlock was stronger than him, and he valued his own life. But still the words boiled and simmered in his mind, churning and frothing on the pits of his heart, biding time, waiting... One day, Linden told himself, I'll stand up to him. And then it would be all right again. A happy ending. But not today. Never today. Some way off, unnoticed by his elder brother, Hemlock stood and knelt by his sister's body. "Coot," he whispered, his head positioned to hide the single tear slipping from his cheek, "you poor, poor idiot." His words, alone and unheard, soon faded into the desert winds. ---- time taken: 2h 15m programme: procreate