In the end there is nothing to grab on to. No anger to cling to or sadness to spiral her away in madness. She is only a very small thing at the bottom of a black well where there is only wet gravel and the smell of damp.
He had taken to the sky and the sweep of his wings carved out an emptiness in her that nothing would touch. She lay down there in the meadow and let her mind be silent. Drifting through it’s quiet prison until morning.
A morning when all her worthlessness wells up as the sunlight spills over her ribbons of gold and she decides that she should die—before something else can break, before her daughter can learn to destroy everything she touches with the same finesse. Litotes hates her, Brigade is immune, and she cannot unsee the shape of her sins — but she can not find even enough in herself to act upon that decision.
It is Valek who finds her, who forces her to her feet and watches over her in silence for hours until another night comes. Then Kelynen takes his place, sad and fair like his father.
Strange that it is for this son that she breaks. Or maybe it isn’t. She apologizes for everything she has and has not been, not laying on his still young shoulders what she has done but admitting how she has failed him. The boy hears it all and in the end comforts her, the mother who has betrayed him all his life. Kensa finds at last the soul clenching affection that a mother should feel for her child. There is a light that shines out of him when he recognizes it, and that heals her enough to leave the meadow with its flowers like blood.
Back in Hyaline proper Kensa remains close to the lake, buried deep in the center of Hyaline where nothing can touch her. Valek and Kelynen take up guarding over her, buffering their mother from the world so that she needs only to tend to Soothe, find comfort in her children’s affection, and lick her wounds. It seems a long time since she noticed how strong and tall Valek has become, and she wonders if Pangea could be convinced of his suitability to take over Hyaline in the Spring.
Everything she has wanted up until now seems muted and far away until she wakes tearless on an autumn morning and slides into her routine like a goldeneye drifting out onto the lake.
Valek joins his dam on her patrol, easy company though she knows he comes more because he is worried than for the practice of it. They discuss unimportant things, she shows him details he misses and she is surprised by the things he alerts on that she would not have even sensed. The work livens Kensa and before long they are creeping through the densely wooded foothills together and Kensa finds herself forgetting to be empty.
Until her son rumbles and stops beside her in the sparsely dappled shade, and Kensa finds herself face to face with Starsin. Kensa brushes a touch over her the young stallion’s strong shoulder and he passes between them and then away into the trees. Kensa has not considered what it would be to meet with Starsin again, and draws a deep, bracing breath. Her features are tired, vulnerable, and beautiful though she would not have them be if she could help it. “Why would you come here?”
@[Starsin]
