The child is weary.
She is tired of all the walking.
Even more than that, she is tired of her mother telling her that it’s important.

The child loves her mother but she hates the walking. Even when her mother lets her lie down to sleep. Even when her mother tenderly kisses her head and says it’ll be all right in the morning. She’ll feel better after she rests.

She hates the walking and she’s beginning to confuse her hate for the walking with a hate for her mother. But the child is good and kind and decent, just like her parents, and she knows that hating her mother is wrong. So she never says it out loud. She just walks and walks and walks and cries sometimes. And her mother always kisses her head and says it’ll be all right. Not much further, it’ll be all right.

And it breaks Prayer’s heart, the crying. The way her child hates the walking. And still, she refuses to heal her because it is important and she wants the child to know how important it is. Just as all the walking they’d done to find Thorn had been important.

“I don’t want to meet anyone else,” the child says at one point and Prayer frowns but tries not to let the child see it. She shakes her head and says, “don’t say that.”

It is near Tephra that the child stops walking and shouts at the sky how much she hates it. The sky, the walking, her mother for making her do the walking, how much it hurts, how tired she is. But Prayer is patient and she kisses the child’s head and does not let it make her angry, too. She kisses the child’s head and says, “we’re almost there.”

And she tells the quiet soul who meets them at the border that they’re looking for Sabbath. They are given direction on where to find her and the two of them go, just a little bit further. And the child’s tears have dried by the time they find Sabbath and Prayer’s heartbeat gets to skittering as she surges forward. Because she, too, is a child who loves her mother.

“Mother!” she cries, beaming, all flooded with relief. And the child follows close behind and feels a sharp pang of jealousy because her mother loves someone else, too. Loves someone else like she loves her.

Prayer is oblivious to all the pain dammed up in her mother’s chest.
Oblivious to how quickly she cycles through all of those emotions.
She suspects nothing when her mother draws her into a tight embrace.

She knows only her mother’s love and she does not try to stifle her smile, does nothing to try and dampen all the relief that floods through her. She could have come back to Tephra at any time, she knows. She had certainly missed her mother, she’d had plenty reason to come back, but the timing had never been right. But she remembers – has always remembered – how her mother had introduced her to her grandmother, how sweetly they had each murmured her name, called her beautiful, filled her with love. And she has returned so that her own daughter might feel that same love.

And when her mother untangles herself from her, Prayer shuffles back to allow her space to take in her granddaughter. Prayer’s smile remains as she watches her daughter blink boldly back at her mother, her lips pulling tight in a grin that looks like a grimace. Smiling at her granddaughter the same way she’d smiled at her father, nervous. Because the child is jealous but she is kind, too, and she doesn’t want this stranger to know she’s jealous.

The stranger’s name is Sabbath and the child nods but can’t find her voice to speak. Just goes on grin-grimacing, uncertain. “This is Basilica,” Prayer says. And Prayer thinks of the child’s father, how fiercely she loves him, but can’t find it in her heart to mention him.

Prayer shifts closer to her mother when she speaks, tucks her head up under the mare’s neck, lays her head across her chest. “Tell me everything,” she murmurs as Basilica teeters closer, glues herself to Prayer’s hip. “I’ve missed you terribly,” Prayer adds and then exhales a contented sigh.