His son was there, again, and he sounded older, looked older, right, and Booker slowly let a relieved sigh blow from his nostrils, the sound whistling through the air. As soon as the tamarin stepped closer, he froze up again, gaze growing wild, flighty, terrified of more horrible images, all telling him that he'd become everything he despised - but the arm didn't phase through him, it looped around his shoulders, pulled him closer, and the numbat pressed his face into Diot's fur, shaking. A yelping bark of laughter escaped at his words, burrowing closer, both paws uncurling to cling to red-black fur. "I... I dunno what happened. Saw things. Clover, but wrong. Terrible things," Booker whispered, eye wide and unseeing. "She - it chase me here. It said you were dead, Diot," he finally choked out, voice breaking and tear-strangled. "She told me I killed you!" The lies - memories - tricks - trickled back. He could see himself laughing with Bee - laughing while they talked, leading him to the Eyes, laughing while he offered to carry him, laughing while he held him under the water until his body went lax, until hummingbird blood tainted the pool, until his claws dug into soft guts and pulled out intestines analytically, watching the miniscule heart slow to a stop. But Bones. He would never have hurt Bones. How could any of the rest be true, then? How? He shuddered. He'd lost time before. Minutes, hours, days, weeks. An entire cycle. He could've done it. He actually could have murdered his own children. "I didn't, I didn't, I promise, I tried so hard to protect you, all of you," and he was whimpering now, babbling nonsense, sobbing into his - dead? - son's fur. "I just, I just wanted a family, I - I d-didn't -" Bones. He needed Bones. Bones would know what to do. Because Bones was alive, safe, somewhere, not dumped somewhere like garbage, not a victim. He wasn't a monster. But the thought remained, like a tack between his eyes, piercing. He'd been bonded to one.

@Diot @Belladonna

A yelping bark escaped his father's lips; Diot felt relieved. Though listening to what Booker described made him worry. He had seen terrible things, and Clover? No it couldn't be her, what ever it was spat lies and slander. Diot's mouth formed a hard line. Worried not only for the fact what ever it was possibly chased him back to the burrow. But that it has caused such a overwhelming negative impact on Booker's psyche. Among these thoughts it occured to him that Booker could have been seeing things; but his father's words rang out as true. So he had no reason to hold any disbelief.

Diot would simply have to enmesh the negative thoughts as always. Calm his father down and take special care to show him all was fine. He simply patted Booker's back. Giving his father a loving embrace, just to let him know everything was alright. But sadly that hadn't worked. The numbat began to babble, whimpering now his words hardly making sense. Diot began to slowly bubble with negative thoughts. For someone to drive his father to the edge yet again. How dare they. The tamarin wasn't an angry soul; not by a long shot. He was possibly one of the most loving and forgiving souls in origin. But this? This was not something he took lightly. This was a malicious attack on his father.

"You could never hurt me...you are so loving and only want the best and you try so much and so hard. You've done nothing wrong."

Calmly he spoke up; staring into his father's good eye. A small smile upon his face. He would show him what was real. He would dig up the grave. Gently grabbing his father's hands with his own he slowly began to walk towards the burrow's entrance.

"Follow me...I am going to show you how they were wrong"

"Speech"

@Booker

She stood, hidden, focusing on perfecting the image, her eyes closed in concentration. She had to enmesh Booker and his son in her rot, her filth, and she needed this to be as close to perfect as she possibly could. It was getting there...she added to what she was already forming under the earth, the hazy image growing clearer with every passing minute. They were coming, she knew, to find her gift, and frustration mounted inside her. The image was given a more substantial weight to it, like shaping a creation without the help of the physical sensations of feeling it as it grew, and the fur grew more distinct rather than just a mass of orange color, and she added the rot to his body, his arms just fallen away to bone, his fur falling off in pieces, but it needed more, and she needed more time. She needed to carve his face into it, to remember what he looked like then take it away as if death had him in its embrace. She ground her teeth together. "......."

They were almost upon the grave, and her eye flickered open, unseeing. His face was slowly forming in her mind's eye eye sockets carved away and full of worms, the flesh gone, the jaw unhinged and showing pure milk white bone. The markings grew more and more clear on his fur now that he was actually coming into view, and she used him as a reference for her creation. She stared at him now, her mind split on him, and the dead version of him lying in his grave. She ripped open his chest and filled it with maggots and black intestines, she made his hand disconnected from his arms and digging into the earth above him, like he was trying to claw his way out at one point, she made the bottom half of him just gone, torn away and placed....somewhere else. Who knew where it went - perhaps down that dragon's gullet? And on his face she placed a distinct impression of horror, like a signature of hers. Mentally exhausted, she broke off the spell and let it lie there, ready for them to discover. She sat down in the shadowed brush, her eyes closed, waiting to hear those sweet screams in exchange for her time and effort. "......."

@Booker