It has been years since she has last been in Pangea, but when the flames had climbed high into the sky, she had been unable to ignore her curiosity.

It had confused her, then, when she had arrived not to a land covered in ash, but one of fallen canyons and various other states of destruction. The smell of burning pine (but the lack of actual pine trees) was almost disconcerting, like an echo, a memory that was trying to take shape but didn’t have the traction. After finding Draco he had filled her in on all that had transpired – the pines that had grown from magic, and then the way the earth had trembled and split, something pulling the raven magician down with it.

This skeletal version of Pangea had been left behind – as if the land could have possibly looked anymore unappealing than it already did.

She had come to Pangea as a child because Stave had insisted, and her twin brother was nearly the only one that she ever listened to without much argument. But here was where she had perfected her love illusionism, where she had forged the closest thing she had ever had to friendships, and here she experienced an early taste of how exhilarating anger and jealousy could be.

It had shaped her, as much as she did not want to admit it.

When Carnage comes she is only mildly surprised to actually see him, having assumed he would not take kindly to someone else destroying what he had built, but being unsure if he would actually do anything about it. Her curiosity sparks again, but the light of it does not reach the endless-black of her eyes while she listens to him. He has come back for her mother time and time again, but he was still a mystery to her.

Still, she debates leaving when he asks them to bring something that reminds them of Pangea; something to help it rebuild. Pangea was not her home anymore, the place too harsh and unforgiving for Thomas and their glass girls, and Desire, endlessly selfish, does not see a reason to help with something that is not hers.

But there is a memory, somewhere in the back of her mind from when she had been young – when she and Stave had been most interested in their father and would ask questions in that unabashed way only children could. She is almost certain Ryatah had told them that should he ever find them, for any reason, to do as he asked.

So she does, if a little begrudgingly.

Along the river had been nearly the only place she had found tolerable when she had lived here. Close to the water, the greenery had been allowed to, maybe not thrive, but grow, at the very least. Here the earth was an odd mix of burnt and partially healed, but wedged between a rocky crevice, she finally finds what she had been searching for. A flower, bright orange in color, and mostly untouched by the effects of the fire, though a little wilted.

She returns to where everyone else has gathered, and she tries to keep the disdain from her face at their contributions, though again based on her mother's stories he will likely be delighted by the body parts. She is not at all concerned at how different – less violent in its retrieval –  her item is. The flower had already looked so out of place, even in its natural habitat. 

A flower blooming in a near wasteland, now resting alongside blood and poison. 

She looks at him with black eyes set against the galaxy-color of her face, the same galaxy that spills across her back and sides, a likeness of the same galaxy she had been conceived in. She does not expect him to know who she is, knowing that she is just one of many – hundreds – of offspring, and so she says nothing. There is only a very faint smile that dares to lift at the edge of her lips.

She watches in silence as Pangea is restored, or at least, mostly. There are still signs of the damage it had taken, scars that showed something had tried to destroy it and it had still emerged victorious. It was still not what she would define as beautiful – but she cannot deny that she feels a sort of relief to see her childhood home returned to the way she had remembered it. Desire and Stave had had little stability once they had chosen to leave their mother’s side, and Pangea is where they had gone together. She had been here for the entirety of Anaxarete’s rule, and a majority of Draco and Ghaul’s. Thomas and the twins were the only reason she had left, but now the twins were grown – and so was she.

Desire was not quite the same brash young thing that she had been, but her selfishness was still well intact, because when Breach speaks, she nearly forgets Thomas entirely.

Something inside of her chest stirs at the mention of Pangea needing a leader; a long-buried part of herself that would have never allowed herself to settle for just being a mother. That greedy part of her that always wanted just a little bit more than what she already had.

Her dark eyes fix themselves onto the Hyaline queen, before diverting back to Carnage. “I’ll do it,” she says, answering Breach, but looking at him – not really sure if he would approve or disapprove, or even care at all. Her head turns, addressing the queen fully now. “I grew up here. It’s only been the last three or so years that I was gone, but….” She pauses, taking a moment to glance at the small group that has gathered. “I still came back when it needed rebuilding.”