09-12-2016, 12:33 AM
Time had moved quickly in those first few hours, in the chaos of understanding all that had happened – of understanding impossible, improbable things. But Malis knew all about impossible things. It was only when family could not be found, when friends went missing without a trace, when entire homes were found to be demolished, that time finally slowed down.
Against all odds, she had found many. With Nymphetamine’s help she had found what was left of the ruined Chamber, she had found strength in the allies Killdare had chosen to trust – and with those allies she found a home, a new world to protect and keep safe, a world her family could love.
But she did not find her family.
Time lost all meaning in the months that followed, lonely days and even lonelier nights unbroken by any sign of those she dared to love. She had a place on the council, a job, but it was in name only. The only reason she had been placed there was to give those from the Chamber a face to trust, a voice in this merging of so many. But Malis was not meant to lead anything, she was not made for the role Killdare had first entrusted to her. She was certain they would have preferred her bay counterpart, but he never came.
He never came.
Finally, Victra joined them, following at the hip of a small grey mare, and at last Malis found some peace. She had pulled her very pregnant, very reluctant, daughter close and made her promise to stay so that the indigo mare could protect her. Perhaps it was the wild in her eyes, the splinters of a shattered heart poking through her chest, but Victra had not argued. Instead she had stayed and birthed two beautiful girls – and the red on the first was enough to tell Malis who the father might have been.
--
She makes the swim from Tephra, abandoning its inhabitants to the much more capable hands of the rest of those who completed the council. It was not the first time she had disappeared to scour the meadows and forests of Beqanna for her family, and it surely wouldn’t be the last – but it was harder now to leave Victra. Still, she finds she cannot stay, cannot exist without knowing more, without knowing what became of her family.
It had always been her promise to protect them, and she had failed wholly.
When she finds them, the world is undone again. Surely mountains crumble and valleys carve themselves like veins through the forests because she can hear the devastation roaring in her ears. She is blue and fluid, ugly in her agony when she spills across uneven, broken ground to stare at the faces she was certain she would only ever see again in the blessed dark of nightmare. But something is wrong, or changed, because even while he has pulled their girl close, he watches with a deeply knitted brow, with furrows like valleys above his eyes. She is not his by blood, not of his flesh, but she is of Malis and so he has always loved her just as he loves Ivo or Victra. Yet now he is quiet at her side, puzzled, holding her, but it is not the same as it had been before, she is sure of it. Though, so very little is the same, anymore.
She joins them silently, drifting close enough only to touch Alight, to trace love with her nose into the arch of a small, golden neck. She might’ve reached out for him too, reached out despite the shadows she thought she felt peering back out of him through the familiar green of eyes she loved, but she joins them in time to hear the last of what he says to Alight. It is almost nothing, and she almost misses it, but there is no warmth in his question. He doesn’t mention her by name, and after six months of being apart, six treacherous months of not knowing, he asks if he should be worried.
He should.
He should, and he should not have to ask that.
I don’t know where your Mother is, should I worry?”
Dark blossoms in the pit of her stomach, it deepens while she watches them, turning to uncertainty, despair. “Alight.” She says at last, quietly, choking on a name she never thought she would have reason to use again. “Come here, love.” She drifts closer still, touching her mouth possessively to the pale gold of their daughter’s shoulder, coaxing her closer and away from the bay stallion who suddenly felt like a stranger.
But –
She cannot help but notice again how he had pulled her close, how she must have crumbled against him and still, with such confusion etched into his face he held her together. “Killdare?” She asks before she can stop herself, and those emerald eyes flash and flicker like hungry green flame against his quiet face. “You should,” she says again, moving around Alight to stand closer, “you should have worried.” When she reaches out to him now it is against every instinct in her body, it feels like betraying herself, and yet when her mouth finds the curve of his jaw, when it drops lower to find that spot of soft above the hollow of his mouth, she is stilled. With a frown she pulls away again, stark and blue and wild in the uncertainty that tears through her now.
And then, “Why didn't you?”
Against all odds, she had found many. With Nymphetamine’s help she had found what was left of the ruined Chamber, she had found strength in the allies Killdare had chosen to trust – and with those allies she found a home, a new world to protect and keep safe, a world her family could love.
But she did not find her family.
Time lost all meaning in the months that followed, lonely days and even lonelier nights unbroken by any sign of those she dared to love. She had a place on the council, a job, but it was in name only. The only reason she had been placed there was to give those from the Chamber a face to trust, a voice in this merging of so many. But Malis was not meant to lead anything, she was not made for the role Killdare had first entrusted to her. She was certain they would have preferred her bay counterpart, but he never came.
He never came.
Finally, Victra joined them, following at the hip of a small grey mare, and at last Malis found some peace. She had pulled her very pregnant, very reluctant, daughter close and made her promise to stay so that the indigo mare could protect her. Perhaps it was the wild in her eyes, the splinters of a shattered heart poking through her chest, but Victra had not argued. Instead she had stayed and birthed two beautiful girls – and the red on the first was enough to tell Malis who the father might have been.
--
She makes the swim from Tephra, abandoning its inhabitants to the much more capable hands of the rest of those who completed the council. It was not the first time she had disappeared to scour the meadows and forests of Beqanna for her family, and it surely wouldn’t be the last – but it was harder now to leave Victra. Still, she finds she cannot stay, cannot exist without knowing more, without knowing what became of her family.
It had always been her promise to protect them, and she had failed wholly.
When she finds them, the world is undone again. Surely mountains crumble and valleys carve themselves like veins through the forests because she can hear the devastation roaring in her ears. She is blue and fluid, ugly in her agony when she spills across uneven, broken ground to stare at the faces she was certain she would only ever see again in the blessed dark of nightmare. But something is wrong, or changed, because even while he has pulled their girl close, he watches with a deeply knitted brow, with furrows like valleys above his eyes. She is not his by blood, not of his flesh, but she is of Malis and so he has always loved her just as he loves Ivo or Victra. Yet now he is quiet at her side, puzzled, holding her, but it is not the same as it had been before, she is sure of it. Though, so very little is the same, anymore.
She joins them silently, drifting close enough only to touch Alight, to trace love with her nose into the arch of a small, golden neck. She might’ve reached out for him too, reached out despite the shadows she thought she felt peering back out of him through the familiar green of eyes she loved, but she joins them in time to hear the last of what he says to Alight. It is almost nothing, and she almost misses it, but there is no warmth in his question. He doesn’t mention her by name, and after six months of being apart, six treacherous months of not knowing, he asks if he should be worried.
He should.
He should, and he should not have to ask that.
I don’t know where your Mother is, should I worry?”
Dark blossoms in the pit of her stomach, it deepens while she watches them, turning to uncertainty, despair. “Alight.” She says at last, quietly, choking on a name she never thought she would have reason to use again. “Come here, love.” She drifts closer still, touching her mouth possessively to the pale gold of their daughter’s shoulder, coaxing her closer and away from the bay stallion who suddenly felt like a stranger.
But –
She cannot help but notice again how he had pulled her close, how she must have crumbled against him and still, with such confusion etched into his face he held her together. “Killdare?” She asks before she can stop herself, and those emerald eyes flash and flicker like hungry green flame against his quiet face. “You should,” she says again, moving around Alight to stand closer, “you should have worried.” When she reaches out to him now it is against every instinct in her body, it feels like betraying herself, and yet when her mouth finds the curve of his jaw, when it drops lower to find that spot of soft above the hollow of his mouth, she is stilled. With a frown she pulls away again, stark and blue and wild in the uncertainty that tears through her now.
And then, “Why didn't you?”