Daddy, I'm alone, 'cause this house don't feel like home

There weren't many times in his life where Gaucho had felt hesitant or uncertain. That did not mean that there were none, for especially during his time as Sultan the dun had encountered many a situation which required deligent contemplation, but for the most part Gaucho followed his primal and primitive instincts, and rarely had they ever led him astray. Into danger and chaos yes, but never astray. And so as his youngest living child turned towards him, without thought for how potentially traumatizing this might be for Iskra, Gaucho stepped forward to embrace him. The dun's flaming wings seemed to roll open as if to block out the sky and its greedy star-point gaze from seeing the embrace which had never been allowed to occur while Gaucho was alive. As the dun took the final step which would bridge the gap between sire and son, the oddest thing happened. Should Iskra have remained where he was, he would have felt only the slightest stirring of air. Was it slightly warmer than it had been, or was that only his skin creating a phantom embrace where there was none? Had the boy moved back, he would have felt the non-existent rush of air that should have accompanied the closing of Gaucho's wings around nothing, or perhaps in that moment he might have noticed how the dun cast no shadow in the dying even light, nor did his hooves leave an imprint of the massive body they carried. Gaucho was a ghost. Gaucho, new to whatever astral projection or semi-reincarnation that this was, cast his stormy gaze downwards not with confusion, but something like resigned frustration, as if he had been expecting something like this to happen. Vorsa let out a small trill of disappointment , while Mara slithered down Gaucho's neck and spine, moving his mane to ensure that she could at least have an affect upon him, if not the surrounding environment. Gaucho sighed, and a deep penetrating sort of sadness creased the deep lines of his face. It was the sort of sadness of a Father who showed up too late to a birthday, one who despite his best efforts had brought the wrong gift. He was a man so far removed from his son before him, and now on top of a mountain of missed opportunities, he wasn't even able to hug him. The dun's wings folded deliberately against his side like two smoldering points of darkness. Gaucho wanted to apologize for dying, for not protecting the Throat better against Kisamoa, and for not being around when Ampere had needed him the most. But even after death, it wasn't as though Gaucho had been gifted with a wider vocabulary and more complex set of emotional tools. And so for a moment all he could do was look into a pair of eyes much more vibrant than his own, and long for something that he could not have. "Gaucho see you, even when not here." He rumbled finally, trying to string together some meager offering that represented the eclipse of pain and longing inside of himself. "Death ... it not like the stories," Gaucho continued, his speech, while a marked improvement from when he had first arrived in Helovia, still broken and lacking any sort of refinement. Still, his words were coloured with genuine affection and sorrow, a bitter sweet melody that even his barbaric sentence structure couldn't ruin. "- but Gaucho see enough. Gaucho watch Iskra grow. Gaucho proud." Gaucho the Wildfire If this is to end in fire Then we should all burn together