Elowen had lost all of her patience with them, and took a moment to breathe at the mouth of the cave. It was agony, to be unable to help her sons. It was frustrating that they denied her comforts when they used to seek them so often.
Midas’ attempts were no better. He approached the twins in his half-shifted form—humanoid with his horns and tail still visible.
He didn’t raise his voice, but the boys quieted under his gaze instinctually.
“Kalen,” Midas said gently, crouching to meet his eyes. “We are just trying to help you.”
“Mama doesn’t get it!” Kalen snapped. “You don’t get it!”
Midas tilted his head, voice still soft. “Then tell me.”
Kalen’s fists clenched. His breath was already smoking. “They took my horn because of you!” Midas stilled, but the words kept coming. “I hate it. I hate being like you. We’re monsters! That’s why they did it!”
“Kalen,” Midas said, more quietly now, hiding the hurt in his chest.
“I didn’t ask to be like you!” Kalen’s voice cracked. “Why couldn’t we just be normal?”
Midas couldn’t stop himself from stumbling when Kalen shoved him in the chest. The push was nothing. Barely a flicker of weight. But the intent behind it was what hollowed him out and knocked him over.
“You should’ve let us be human like mama,” Kalenwhispered, tears brimming in his eyes. “Then they wouldn’t have hurt me.”
He turned and ran deeper into the cave. His twin didn’t follow. He just stared at their father, eyes wide with secondhand hurt.
Midas remained on his knees for a long moment. And then he rose, turned, and walked out of the cave to stand with Elowen.
She wasn’t far, just at the edge of the cliff that had deep groves etched into the stone from years of Midas landing there. Elowen sat silently with her legs dangling over the edge. If she heard what Kalen said, she did not acknowledge it.
Midas shifted into his dragon form and curled tightly into himself. He tried to make himself small and invisible despite being something so large. In his solace of this form, he felt his heart crumble.
He had expected fear from his children, and maybe even confusion. Even anger he could understand.
But rejection? Midas never knew hurt like experiencing that from them.
Though they were his greatest treasures, Midas worried they would never forgive him for making them dragons. It was no longer a source of pride for them—they saw their father the way the rest of the world did: as a monster.
And that hollowed Midas out with guilt and grief nearly too heavy to bear. He would not tell Elowen this, for he did not want her to carry this weight too.
The days grew longer,and another moon passed.
The boys healed, slowly. Kalen’s wound was scabbed and fading into a hard, angry scar. They still played. Still laughed. But never when Midas was close.
And neverwithhim.
Elowen noticed it first in the way they began to follow her everywhere. Even more than before. If she went to fetch water, they came. If she tended the garden of delicate herbs by the cliff’s edge, they trailed behind her like shadows.
They slept curled around her now, both pressed into her sides, their little hands clinging to her nightdress long after dreams took them.
Midas stopped joining the bedtime nest. He did not want to disturb his children by being so close when they were vulnerable with sleep. Instead, he lay near the cave’s mouth in dragon form, his wings folded tight and unmoving, golden eyes open well into the night.
Once, when Elowen stirred before dawn, she found him staring at her, curled with their children, longing in his eyes to be included again. She rose and walked to him silently, laying a hand against his side.
“They don’t mean it,” she said.
His answer was a quiet, earth-deep rumble of disagreement.
She sat beside him, curling her legs beneath her. “They’re children. They’re angry. They don’t know where to put it.”
It was untrue, and they both knew it. They saw the way Kalen’s fear had hardened into suspicion. The way he stared when Midas entered the cave—tense, unmoving, like prey waiting to bolt. The glares. The silence. Once, Kalen even stepped between Midas and Elowen when the former approached—arms out, small and shaking.
