06-02-2019, 10:28 AM
A month ago they’d been planning to leave Loess, and now even the idea of being too far from the grave is terrifying. She feels as though some intangible bit of her heart is buried there in the earth, the part with which she’d once held Gale. Even now, facing the sea, she knows just where to turn to see the burial site. The navy haired woman wonders if Wolfbane knows too, but cannot not ask.
Lepis tenses at the sharpness in his voice, but does not flinch away as she once might have in their early days. Instead she waits, waits until he finally turns to look at her. Her blue-grey eyes are shadowed by dusk and sorrow and her blazed face shakes side to side as he speaks, as though doing so might somehow make his words untrue. He turns away again, and does not see her quiver at the image he describes. She is glad she did not see it, but that does nothing to hinder her imagination. She has pictured it ten thousand times.
A soft blue figure in the ashy sky, tumbling toward the glowing earth, fear in his young eyes.
For a long moment that is all she sees. The pain is visceral in her chest, but she refuses to quell it. Nor does she soften that the anger that rises to replace it, a balm that she finds far preferable.
“You haven’t.” She says when he speaks of leading their family down a trail laden with mistakes. “You haven’t.” Lepis says again, reaching out to press her muzzle against his shoulder even though she half fears he might pull away.
“You didn’t let him fall,” the mare continues, her voice slowly beginning to feel as tight as her chest. “But what if...what if someone made him fall?” Speaking the words aloud feels somehow freeing. They no longer spin about in the back of her mind, a question that she dare not think of. Lepis has never doubted her husband’s story, but something has never made sense. Gale was a strong flier, at least for a boy his age. Why would he have fallen out of the sky? Was he hurt? By whom?
The questions lead back to a single answer and one emotion: Tephrans and Fury. Different from her hatred of Sylva, the two emotions have fed off each other in the silence after the death of her son. They are absent in her expression (she is a master of this, after all) but she makes no effort to hide her physical reaction, the tensing of her muscle and the clenching of her jaw. The mask is unconscious, but she does not hide her emotions from her husband the way she might in company.
@[Wolfbane]
Lepis tenses at the sharpness in his voice, but does not flinch away as she once might have in their early days. Instead she waits, waits until he finally turns to look at her. Her blue-grey eyes are shadowed by dusk and sorrow and her blazed face shakes side to side as he speaks, as though doing so might somehow make his words untrue. He turns away again, and does not see her quiver at the image he describes. She is glad she did not see it, but that does nothing to hinder her imagination. She has pictured it ten thousand times.
A soft blue figure in the ashy sky, tumbling toward the glowing earth, fear in his young eyes.
For a long moment that is all she sees. The pain is visceral in her chest, but she refuses to quell it. Nor does she soften that the anger that rises to replace it, a balm that she finds far preferable.
“You haven’t.” She says when he speaks of leading their family down a trail laden with mistakes. “You haven’t.” Lepis says again, reaching out to press her muzzle against his shoulder even though she half fears he might pull away.
“You didn’t let him fall,” the mare continues, her voice slowly beginning to feel as tight as her chest. “But what if...what if someone made him fall?” Speaking the words aloud feels somehow freeing. They no longer spin about in the back of her mind, a question that she dare not think of. Lepis has never doubted her husband’s story, but something has never made sense. Gale was a strong flier, at least for a boy his age. Why would he have fallen out of the sky? Was he hurt? By whom?
The questions lead back to a single answer and one emotion: Tephrans and Fury. Different from her hatred of Sylva, the two emotions have fed off each other in the silence after the death of her son. They are absent in her expression (she is a master of this, after all) but she makes no effort to hide her physical reaction, the tensing of her muscle and the clenching of her jaw. The mask is unconscious, but she does not hide her emotions from her husband the way she might in company.
@[Wolfbane]
