He heard his sister cry out his name and all that he could manage was a whoop of pure joy to answer her. The exhilaration of the hunt, of having his family with him, it was enough to suspend any concern in the color of the stags or in the strange weather and the plague itself. His gaze meet the Great Stag. It felt like their souls connected somehow across the planes. Isaiah was not the type who allowed himself truly to be swept up into hysteria. He liked to think that he was level-headed most of the time. Though he didn't really experience his parents much on their own, he had followed more dutifully along the path his mother laid out, although his shiny rocks merely were the carriers of his feelings regarding his siblings.

Hunting, providing for Dawnbreak, making sure that none of his family ever went without, it was something he had internalized and, though very well intended, he had misplaced as his own burden to bear. He was greedily clinging to it, like somehow he'd save them from wasting away as Olive had. He could not carry it all on his own, and yet he still would try. Rather than face the stag solo - Berii would have pummeled him then, he veered suddenly and scrambled away, startling a few of the smaller blue creatures until they scattered. He was not the only one, it seemed, who was taking advantage of their speed. He watched the others as they cleaved the herd.

Isaiah knew, through something deep and instinctive, that this wild hunt was so much more. His heart raced to the cadence of the hooves as they pounded the land. He could not stop, because they all could not stop, and the hooves would not stop either. He saw his siblings running, he saw them in their own regards rather than as the balancing act that they were. Aurelia, of the Pillar of Wisdom, and Tiberii, of the Pillar of Power. Every molecule of his body felt alive with energy, as if he was never at risk of falling asleep. As if the world had seen him fit to be as all the rest were.