the golden age come and passed

Apollo was growing older, and while his body was not yet deteriorated, he found himself afflicted by that bitter malady so often affecting the elderly - nostalgia. It seemed to him more and more that the Abraxas were deteriorating from what they once had been. Perhaps the weaknesses of the mortal blood that ran through them had rooted too deeply, affections of parents for pups too great to do what needed to be done to weed out the defects. For all his threats and posturing, perhaps that had started with his father Gaios. Seeing all his siblings and their children here, away from the elder Gaios, had made clear to Apollo all the problems that had managed to slip through the cracks. Maybe it was less that he had been too attached and more that he'd simply had too many children to keep up with them all and see what they were becoming.

Pyralis' headstrong nature had once seemed like an anomoly, when compared only to Amon and Apollo's steadfast nature. Now it felt like she was closer to the Abraxas standard than many of the others who had been allowed to live. Several litters had been born to the Abraxas since they'd moved into these lands and yet did even the eldest of them, those who Amon had the most influence over, did even they understand their place in the world? He had to wonder. Perhaps it was a mistake to have allowed the trend of mating with spirits and those touched by spirits - perhaps the spirits that were propagating the new generation of Abraxas were exerting too much influence, twisting the bloodline from what the Fallen God had given them.

Slipping through the underbrush of the maze-like forest that he'd begun to know so well, like a ghost himself in the darkness with only the moon and stars to dapple through the trees and catch his pale fur, the male began to consider that perhaps it was time for him to raise his own batch of children in the ways he had been taught. A buffer, if you will, against the indulgences heaped upon so many others of the new generations. Would they ever earn their place beside their exalted Father if so many exhibited the very weaknesses they had been exhorted to cull from their ranks to bring them back to His perfection?