Gods of Malcea ✔️

N I N E T E E N

"There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls."

-Xamdù
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As night fell and the moon rose to the middle of the sky, Karos continued to hunch over the bed. He had not moved from that spot since the break of dawn. Even when he heard someone opening up the hut door, he did not bother to raise his head. Instead, he took his hand and combed it through his hair paying no mind to whoever entered.

Karos could feel Fariel's eyes on him, but Fariel never uttered a word. He took his silence for a kind of truce between the two of them. They were not on good terms with one another, and Karos did not expect them to be for a while.

"How does deer sound for dinner?" Analia broke the silence with her cheery voice.

Still, Karos stayed silent along with Fariel. It only caused Analia to laugh as she sat the deer outside and walked back in.

"Ake had been trying to be rid of you for so long. Do not blame him if he found the most golden opportunity." She walked towards the hearth and sat down right beside Fariel and smiled. "I am quite glad he is gone. No more of those things. No more strange happenings."

Karos opened his mouth to say something, but he closed it. He was exhausted, too exhausted, to argue with her. She did not know a thing.

"After everything you had done for him, he leaves without a single word. It is quite clear how he felt about you and things."

"Analia," Fariel cut in. "Enough."

"No, he must hear it if you will not be the one to tell him." She cut her eyes away from him and back to Karos. "We are your friends. We have always been and always will be. Do not feel so bitter of a man, a dragon, you barely had come to know."

Karos looked to her with narrowed eyes.

"Trust in us once more.  Truly, wholly. We will, we would never abandon you as he did."

He was becoming noticeably upset.  As much as he was trying to suppress it, he felt nothing but hurt. He was angry he had left him once more, but he was much too bitter and upset to express it because it reminded him of what his mother had done to him. It caused the wound she had given him to fester. Being abandoned and betrayed was something that hurt him most, and Ake had done both of those things to him in a span of a few hours. It left him in pieces. 

"Analia, cook dinner, " Fariel said more as a command than a request.

"I do not know how to cook, you know that," Analia said.

"Well, learn. Now is a better time than ever." 

She sniffed and walked out the door. 

"I very well know how you are feeling, Karos. However, he had his reasons."

"I am sure he had." Karos pressed his hand against the bed and rose not wanting to hear any more of what he had to say. "As I must have my own for feeling this way. I am angry. I am hurt and no words can dispel these emotions from me. He was a friend to me, Fariel, and it seems as though that mattered very little to him to leave like this, this way."

Fariel could not meet his eyes. They stayed downcast until he let out a sigh and rose from the floor. "You had become too distracted with the needs of Ake to see to your own. Let us head to Visnu and speak to your father on these growing matters."