#i was listening to pangolin-404's buddy playlist the entire time iwwas drawing this

[koukaaa-descent]

the antithesis of hate

(This is not necessarily connected to the art,, I've just had this in my drafts for a while and. Well.)

Monsoon was scorched by the blaze of the star, fragile skin blackening, sparse blues burning away beneath the heat of it. Indigo, suddenly impulsive, wrapped his arms around it. The poor thing is so much larger now—it’s nearly impossible to wrap his arms all the way around its body.

“You need to live,” he says, finding something awfully wet in his voice beneath the star’s hissing fires. Monsoon rattles, a series of short chirps interspersed with sharp clicks. It sounded almost familiar to the coo of a pigeon. Because of either mimicry or familiarity, its arms wrap around him as well, reciprocating such a familiar touch in spite of the pain each movement brought. Claws settle against the fabric of his uniform, never piercing the thick material.

“You need to live,” Indigo forces out, heartbroken for a reason he could not possibly discern. A terrible sense of hopelessness pervaded his senses. Heat began to char his suit, vicious flame devouring all it touched. He fought back the heat in his eyes caused not by pain but rather something else.

Monsoon would sprint through a field filled with eyeless dogs if Indigo had been the one to say that it was safe. That was the problem with creatures so beautifully intelligent yet so loyal—loyalty could bring about suicide for the sake of another. Intelligence would grant it the ability to know that and do whatever it was anyway.

They’re running out of time. They’ve always been running out of time. Indigo’s just glad that they got to spend their short lives together. He squeezes Monsoon as tight as he can, wondering where his tiny, inquisitive little dove had gone. A Bracken grew so impossibly quickly that those days had begun and ended in a mere moment of time. But... what a truly wonderful moment it was.

Fire engulfs the star, shrieking a demand unto the universe itself. Monsoon keens in pain, wrapping itself around his body with what little it can move. Loyal to the point of suicide.

In an awfully short moment, wrapped in his oldest companion's arms, Indigo finally puts a name to that foreign emotion. Love.

Light sears his sclerae through the tinted visor. With a raspy, thin whistle, Monsoon frays beneath it and scatters away into ash that utterly blinds Indigo to the world beyond. Very suddenly, the searing pain does not mean anything. Nothing at all.

The star billows into existence as it finally implodes, roaring past them—the impossibly tiny things that they both were in the face of it.

The last thing that Indigo ever sees. The first thing that he dares to regret.