#oc: exion

[fallowfield]

Father's Favorite

SUMMARY: Theiva is not her father's favorite child. She is different. But she wants to be like her sisters.

[ CW: child favoritism, partner death, self-injury, stillbirth, and some typical myth violence ]

I am not my father's favorite.

I am not his least favorite, either. Far from Mother's least, but her favorite will always be her firstborn, who Father hates.

I suppose it has something to do with how I am built. How I am perceived. I am a predator among its prey; a hunter among herbivores. The only of my kind so far. How the hen and the wolf got along well enough to have children is still a question to be answered, but how the hen hatched a fox is unanswerable all the same.

The worst part of it all is simple: I want to be Father's favorite. We are the most similar. We are the ones that understand each other the most. Yet he refuses to admonish me with the title of favorite; he gives that to my sisters, the twins. To Dedea and Brayja, the rulers of night and day. Sheep with no one else to turn to or follow than the mighty sheepdog that carries them.

When he gives the order to kill my brother's wife, who am I to refuse?

Though I am not the one to hang her—he demands that honor for himself—I am the one to capture her. She begs for mercy. For freedom. But I cannot give that to her. I have it dead set in my mind that I must usurp my sisters and take their place as his favorite. That I must become like a sheep following orders in exchange for his favor.

He is in the crowd when Father reveals her fate. The fate of all of the humans he gave life to. I am, unfortunately, horrified that he would do all of this just to get back at the son he never wanted, never loved. That he never believed was his.

But I cannot justify stopping this madness with myself. I am powerless as her head falls from her shoulders and lands with a sickening plop in front of the stage he commanded for himself. Though a warrior would never call themselves helpless, should never call themselves helpless.

Regret fills my stomach and heart the moment I hear him cry her name. It's weak, like a croak of despair, and as he makes such a sound, Father makes an additional statement to the horrified, sickened crowd around us.

"Ona's son, Exion, will be the ruler of death; of the end of all things; of the aftermath of it."

He cries out again at the unwanted assignment of the thing that took the only human he cared about from him. But Father is the king of us, the king of all. He cannot refuse his statements.

I can hear his shuddering sobs late into the night. I can hear Mother trying to soothe him gently into sleep. I can hear Dedea and Brayja checking in on him late.

None of them speak a word to me on this matter. I do not speak a word to them of it, either.

When the war is declared, I am there. My brother stands on the opposite side of the room, his eyes flaring with anger. He points one finger at father, demands an answer, but is given none. He takes the form he so despised that he claimed to have given up; his antlers stretch high above his head, poking carefully into the heavens when he is out of our domain, dark eyes and long snout filled with rage. We are enemies the moment he defies Father. The moment I refuse to step away from the form on the throne. Mother stays out of it. Dedea and Brayja are beside him.

Father hands me a dagger. Tells me to prove myself to him by taking my own brother's heart. I do not hesitate to step to him, looking him in the eyes. I grab him by the cloak, pause only briefly. I see that he is not only full of rage, but full of grief. The same grief as when mother buried her third child without Father's knowledge, when she asked me to place a tree that would forever grow from the soil of the earth so as to never forget her lost child. And I falter for just a moment.

I place my hand to the right side of my brother's chest. His blood is like acid when I remove the blade from its position inside him.

When father cries out, tells me I am a disappointment to him, when my brother rises from the wound, I am never more happy not to be father's favorite.

[fallowfield]

something i noticed while looking at designs from Adventure Time actually

[fallowfield]

ok quick context: one of my ocs takes the heart as sacrifice because hes a god and is trying to return to his form after being banished and locked up under his father's throne room for giving humans free will after his (human) wife was killed for acting on her own. he's supposed to be the christian devil in universe and his father is the christian god. yes i have religious trauma.

anyway any living thing with a heart has a soul. i technically stole this from ancient Egyptian beliefs.

[fallowfield]

would you believe me if i said all three of these characters exist in the same universe and regularly interact with each other

[fallowfield]

i LOVE having characters that have extreme regrets but only for certain parts of the awful shit they've done