when the words lay heavy on my heart
i am lost, led only by the stars

Some part of her knew that she would one day return to Beqanna. It is her mother’s home, where Caeli still presumably lingers, and her father as well. Those relationships drifted off into the distant pass, as some vestigial happy memories of a time before Death. Her mother lives on, though. Not in the traditional sense, for she could not curl her petite figure up against her, nor could she ever lay eyes on on that gentle smile again. But the magic of her mother worked in some mysterious way (Kerowyn should not be surprised, Morphine was always rather fantastically mysterious to her), and her conscience chose to reside in her daughter’s head.

A gift, her mother always said, to make up for leaving so soon.

You don’t have to do this, her mother says. You don’t have to return.
Kerowyn knows she doesn’t, but she has yet to find a place that feels like a home.
Maybe it’s time to return. It can’t hurt.
You don't know Beqanna, love, her mother warns. 

She wades across the high summer grass, enjoying the pleasant feeling of a light tickle across her belly. Heat lingers in the air, but it is not the warmth of the Desert. She looks across the open area, towards the South and the source of the warm breeze. Her eyes go distant, empty as the cloudless sky they mirror; lost in thought and swimming in memories, Kerowyn turns inward. She is a thinker, a feeler, and some part of her has always lived elsewhere, it seems. Off with the fairies, or somewhere in the land of the Lotus Eaters. Wherever she is, it is a happy place, for a faint smile spreads across her lips with an all too innocent air.  

kerowyn

brennen x morphine

when the words lay heavy on my heart
i am lost, led only by the stars

If Allanna - or whatever was left of Allanna - hadn’t raised objection to her descendant’s despicable actions, Pompey probably would have gotten away with it. Morphine alone is not strong enough to punish him, as that had never been her intention when she sent a fraction of her consiousness into her daughter. Neither Kerowyn, nor her mother, have ever encountered anything like this, never been subject to such irrational violence, and never been a victim. Her family weren’t victims. Maybe it’s been pure luck since she left Beqanna, or maybe it’s just a sense of otherness about Kerowyn, but they’ve been flying solo ever since they left. No threat from roaming stallions, nothing the little bay mare couldn’t outrun. This? This is… a hammer’s blow to a pane of glass that is held together by duck tape. Serviceable for a number of years, but ultimately fallible. Ugly, and sometimes the wind whistles through, but it holds up. It works.

How can it work after this?

Kerowyn’s body goes numb while her mother simmers inside. Pompey’s snide words aren’t strong enough to draw her into the real world again, so she does as best she can to mend the trauma as it occurs. There is nothing that can completely soothe her daughter’s mind, or take away the physical violation and the twins that will blossom in her womb. She is a flicker of light in Kerowyn’s mind, until a breath of air from the very distant past comes barreling in.

Oh god. Could it be?
Allanna? her mother cries out, grasping at what must surely be a figment of her imagination.
But then the stallion freezes, and she knows her Miracle is nigh.

Morphine has a fraction of her strength and Kerowyn has no aptitude to channel it, but even an old, old, old magician can summon up new tricks. Hold on, darling, her mother says, choosing not to tell her that this may be goodbye. Like a moth to the flame, she reaches for that familiar presence, and summons all of her strength, pulling from blood and bone and the magic that infuses the very air around them. Kerowyn begins to glow, from the inside. Light emanates from her eyes and ears and sets her mane on end. A trail of it, no - more like a stream - pours out of her Kerowyn’s body as her mother drains herself from it.

I love you, darling. Be strong… she says in parting, knowing that in taking out this monster, she will forever remove herself from this world. There is no choice. It is the greatest sacrifice that a mother can make for her child, and she has always been willing to do it. She just needs a little help, and so she reaches out to Allanna, to the sister she’s always mourned.

Allanna?
The question remains unspoken. She could not voice the request to have her help kill her great-grandson; that is not Morphine’s way. She would rather say - help me save my daughter.

kerowyn

brennen x morphine

when the words lay heavy on my heart
i am lost, led only by the stars

What I wouldn’t give to be able to hug you right now, her mother says, and Kerowyn knows it isn’t directed towards her, but towards the distinctly female voice that is coming from the stallion. It’s all a mystery, a terrifying mystery and all the little bay mare wants to do is run far far away. Alas, her body is frozen, and even if she was able to move, where would she run to? Where is safe? To the frozen wasteland of the Tundra, where her father might still be living, or to the barren Desert of her mother, which holds such tainted memories?

So perhaps it’s best to stay here. But why did her mother say goodbye? And why was her voice so much more on the outside than the inside? As far as Kerowyn knows, no one else has ever been able to hear her mother.

I wish it didn’t have to be this way, dear… but her mother sighs, sounding resolved. At least there will children. Part of us, together again. And at that, she sounds pleased, though Kerowyn hasn’t the foggiest idea who this other voice is, and why she is so important to her mother. It can’t be Seraph, and it isn’t her father, so who?; the life before Morphine returned to the Desert is a mystery, and though Kerowyn knows her mother was so very old when she died, she knows little else.

Goodbye. I love you - to whom her mother says this, isn’t entirely clear, but just as soon as she’s finished, the light that was Morphine swoops into the stallion and if it is possible to glow any more, he does so. He is ablaze now, like the sun, and Kerowyn must step back and avert her eyes. There is a blast of light that sends her stumbling and reeling, and temporarily blind. And then there is silence - and when Kerowyn opens her pretty blue eyes, the stallion is no more.

And her head is all too quiet - frighteningly so.

kerowyn

brennen x morphine