αℓℓ ғσя αρεs
The incident replayed on a loop through the tired ape's mind, each step taken with tense muscles and a deep furrowed brow over his eyes. As much pain and death as Caesar had witnessed the past two years, he never grew used to the sight or the smell, and he became more and more angry with each time he came face to face with it.
They had lost so many apes, and there was no end in sight.
The new information that the grizzled leader had gained from this particular event also gnawed at his mind as he made his way through the series of dark caves that his kind had been forced to hide in. He hated that they had to hide, to live in fear all over again, not in cages but in caves. But these humans were more ruthless than any Caesar had ever known, took great, disgusting pleasure in murder that rivaled a certain bonobo whose name had almost become taboo within the colony. The apes had had no choice but to hide. These humans would not stop until each ape was lifeless.
And now, he knew, there was more to it than that... more to it than any of them had thought.
For the sake of those within, Caesar forced his face into a more neutral expression as he entered this cave chamber, though frown lines had been deeply etched into his features the past two years no matter what expression he took on. Young eyes all faced his direction immediately and as though completely oblivious to the world they were growing up in, happy grunts and hoots greeted him and some imitated the palm up posture that they had seen their parents assume when the great leader entered a scene. He swiped each of them with gentle fingers, not for his benefit but for their own, for it sent them into excited squeaking and raspy laughing. It was a sound that had once filled his ears each day, when they had lived in their beautiful forest village. Here in these caves, the sound was increasingly rare.
When his eyes finally landed on his own blood, however, his softening expression grew sorrowful. Milo, once a quite happy and curious infant, had grown into an anxious juvenile who clung to Cornelia's arm as though his life depended on his doing so. This was not the life Caesar had wanted for his youngest son. For any of the apes. But it was the only reality they had available to them now.
Heaving a sigh that flared his nostrils, Caesar's gaze landed instead on his beautiful Cornelia, and he pressed his forehead to her's. Eyes nearly squeezing closed as though everything was getting to be just too much, he cupped the back of her head with his hand and wished that everything would return to the way things had been.
