all that we have amassed sits before us, shattered into ash Months have passed since she has escaped the dark god’s lair, and slowly but surely Cress is learning once more how to relax. Long days pass and Cress spends most of them alone as she recovers from the torture she endured. Winters passes slowly ( coldly) and she can breathe without panicking; spring arrives and her head wound finally closes on its own, leaving an ugly scar that is mostly covered by her thick forelock. Now spring is bleeding into summer and she feels as though she is finally ready to venture out of the kingdom for the first time in a very long time. It’s now or never, as they say. She can do this.
The mark under her eye seems to hum as she approaches the border, but she doesn’t let her fear overwhelm her. Eight had magically (and, surprisingly, painlessly) pressed the tattoo into her skin, with a stern reminder that Flamevein’s curse would hurt her far longer than the others if she ever betrayed the Valley—not that she ever plans to. She loves her home far too much to ever want to betray it; she’ll live out the rest of her days here. The valley is the only thing she has left. Her family is gone… she has no lover or loyal friends, admittedly by her own choices. She has to serve the Valley because it is the only thing that matters.
She tries not to think about her dead parents… she has grieved heavily for them already and their memories are painful to bear. She knows she should honor them, tell the others that two former monarchs have passed into the voice… but she can’t. Even their names burn when they pass her lips. When the truth comes out, she hopes that they do not blame her for keeping it to herself. It’s just so hard to think about… it was hard enough to tell Demian they were dead, and she hadn’t even called them by name. She wonders if Davorin knows about Father’s passing; do Smolder and Sinder even care that Mother is gone?
She stops as the edge of the cosmic flames marking the border, and though she closes her eyes, she can still see the light of the flames and feel their sickening heat warming her skin. She has no reason to be afraid—her loyalty to the Valley is unwavering—but she remains frozen in place for many minutes. She has the mark. The flames cannot hurt her; they will not burn her. With a whimper she takes a step forward, the heat washing over her as her foreleg breaches the barrier. Another step and both front limbs have made it through and she feels trapped in the border’s embrace. Struggling (an failing) not to panic, she forces herself completely out of the Valley. She made it, she’s uninjured. Sobbing with relief, she stumbles away from the Valley.
The return trip will be just as traumatizing.
The trip to the Meadow takes far longer than a trip across the kingdom, and she is exhausted when she finally arrives; she’s way too out of shape for this ( how did she ever survive the dark god’s lair like this?). Perhaps she was in better shape some months ago; maybe weeks and months of stagnation have made her weak. Stranger things have happened, after all. So what if she’s out of shape? She’s no warrior; she has none of the characteristics of a true warrior. She doesn’t need to be in shape all of the time—that would be positively exhausting. Politics are too important for that.
Her parents were warriors, though.
She tries so hard not to think of them.
She tries so hard, but why then is the dark grey shape that is so familiar to her crossing her sight? The mare who birthed her, the one who always tried to appear dainty but had too much draft in her to appear as anything other than baroque. If she is hallucinating, why is the woman coming closer and becoming more real? Why is her dead mother appearing to her? Has she finally gone crazy? Has the dark god played yet another cruel trick on her? But no, the woman is most definitely here and solid and real and Cress collapses into her embrace. She doesn’t wonder how Kindling could recognize her after so many years—a mother never forgets her child’s face, even if it has been nearly a decade since they last talked. She never forgets. She never forgot. She’s not dead. She’s here. She’s real.
Hopefully she doesn’t mind Cress sobbing into her shoulder. cress oxytocin x kindling
Her eyes fall on a golden child.
Her golden child.
She is young still, well, in her mother’s eyes. She is naïve and innocent and everything that Kindling left her as. In the mind of Kindling, her child is still her little girl.
She isn’t as impulsive and dimwitted as Smolder.
She isn’t as angry and hateful as Sinder.
Her daughter is what should have happened. Oxy, and Kindling… no one, nothing else. It would have started, and ended with her. She eyes as her daughter seems entranced by her appearance.
If only she knew, kin doesn’t mean anything to Kindling.
Her daughter wraps herself within her shoulder and an annoyed flick swings from Kindling’s tail. She wasn’t much for affection, not anymore… And yet here her golden child was, wrapping herself within the warmth of her dearest mother. A mother thought dead, and gone. A mother thought buried along with her history.
It takes a moment for Kindling to correct herself and perform an appropriate reaction, “oh Cress, you’re beautiful.” Her voice is instantly softened like butter, wrapping around her daughter’s ears like a self written piano tune.
“I am so sorry, I am so, so sorry,” her voice is cracking in all the right spots, her tone is smooth in just the perfect fashion. Kindling has mastered her art, practiced her talent. Cress is the missing piece to her very important puzzle. She needs her daughter, she needs her more now than ever.
Kindling has plans, but she needs the foundation first.
“I am here now, Cress… I will always be here.” And her head lowers to conform her child against her chest.
![[Image: HFqRV2Q.png]](https://i.imgur.com/HFqRV2Q.png)
all that we have amassed sits before us, shattered into ash One ability that Cress hasn’t had the opportunity to truly test is her kingdom-granted empathy. She was granted the power only weeks after she first ventured into the Valley after Demian announced her promotion. It wasn’t a promotion she was ready for (or even a promotion she deserved) but Demian needed someone to step up and take the reins and he had somehow chosen Cress as the most qualified for the job. Talk about nerve-wracking. She has done her best to meet his expectations, but being captured by hellhounds and tortured for weeks (or so it felt) will put a bit of a halt to one’s ambitions.
I am not my mistakes, she tells herself daily, and so far it is working. She has been too busy focusing on her own emotions to tune in to how someone else is feeling. Her mental health has been the most important thing lately—months have passed and she is only just now beginning to feel normal again. It hasn’t been the easiest thing but she’s been able to surround herself with the darkness of the Valley and just rest. The nightmares are finally starting to fade away and so she feels like it is safe to leave her haven once more.
We all see how that worked out. Maybe she wasn’t ready.
Cress’ mother allows for the golden girl to nearly collapse into her dam’s side, but in her emotional state she is weak. She doesn’t try to pull her empathy into the deepest confines of her mind and tendrils of it sneak out, embracing Kindling’s mind—what she finds there is not what Cress expects from her mother at all. The tail flick is accompanied by a flash of annoyance and Cress trembles. Is Kindling not happy to see her? Does she hate Cress, too? All at once it is all too much for the golden child and she breaks away from her mother, breaking away from the comforting words and the returned embrace.
It is all fake.
“Why are you lying?” she snaps, tears streaming openly down her face as she glares at her dam. “You’re not happy to see me; stop lying to me. You’re not sorry.” Betrayal cracks her angry exterior and the hurt is plain in her eyes, but she cannot stop herself. She is her father’s fire and her mother’s harsh words and she cannot be put out. She has survived far too much to be put through a betrayal as sharp as this, twisting and burning in her heart. The fire in her chest is awakening and she has to swallow fire to get the words out.
“I’m not beautiful, I am a disaster torn apart by the ravages of time and circumstance. I am scarred and terrified of the world and my parents abandoned me. I was only weeks old and you abandoned me. In the middle of an earthquake!” She is screaming now and she cannot stop the tears; she cannot pull herself back together like she normally can. She is too far gone. “My legs broke and I thought I was going to die; I discovered how to heal and it took me months to put myself back together. I thought you dead. You and Father both.”
She knows that Carnage took her beauty when he took her innocence, and her mother’s lies just bring that to the surface. Her ears were torn away by fire and her breast is marked with a vicious dragon, the same one living inside her heart and kindling the flames on her tongue. Mother cannot see it, but there is a hideous scar on her forehead, just under the dirty tuffs of blonde mane. She is not beautiful. She has no need for beauty when her entire heart has been given to her kingdom. She doesn’t need Kindling or the memory of her father’s corpse.
Kindling is not how she remembers her mother.
Maybe that memory was something all in her head. cress oxytocin x kindling
infected.
Look what I have done.
I have created a horrible, dramatic, emotional wreck. My genes have done this. I did this.
It is one thing to have created something basic. Something that surely you cannot be proud of, something you cannot brag about, something that you dismiss as nothing but grandchildren. It is another thing to come to the realization you have created something absolutely pathetic. You start questioning all your decisions, all your motives, everything that amounted to the birth of your own kin. And then you wonder how the hell, how on earth did a child of your own genetics turn out to be so absolutely messy.
It is something else entirely to be irritated with your own creations.
Clearly this emotional wreck is more of her father. Yes, that is it. This poor child is cursed with the emotional stability of Oxytocin. That’s alright, our beautiful and talented Kindling can mend that tear.
“Hush,” it is an order not a lullaby. Kindling has reached the end of her act, she cannot bear to hold herself together any longer. To act caring is like asking the Mad Hatter to act wise and discreet. He can manage a sentence, maybe a paragraph—but to call him a doctor is a crime. He will, in a minute or two, crack.
Crack.
I love that word.
Crack.
“You’re cracking, Cress” she states with no real empathy at all. Kindling is who Kindling is, a widow twice left by men who she loved, loved. And this child dare whine about being abandoned once. Once! What a hysterical problem. She doesn’t know what it is like to be left, and then taken, and then left, and then picked up, and then left, and then left twice in a row. She doesn’t know what it is like to have broken into a million pieces several times, only to have the next person cradle her and mend her back together. And then only in a months time, a month, does someone come and knock her glass vase of a heart off the kitchen table once more.
Broken.
Fixed.
Broken.
Fixed.
“Here I thought a daughter of such powerful bloodlines would be stronger than this. Would be… Memorable. And yet here you are, a blip in time and a mistake at best. Cress, I thought you were something worth coming back for.”
Isn’t that awfully sad, that a mare of her elegance and class would come back only to be disappointed once more? Shame, shame that Kindling wasted her time imagining her daughter to be fantastic. Imagining that her child—a child that was conceived by a man she half believed to be absolute perfection—would be flawless and bold.
Smolder was a blip, a mistake, a mess.
Sinder was emotional, a mute, useless.
But now to find Cress nothing more than diagnosed with a serious case of empathy and emotional distress… Well. Well maybe she should just stop reproducing altogether.
Her children seem to have no real baring on the world.
“I am so sorry child, that you turned out the way you did. Maybe you are my lesson. You, my dear, are my lesson to never reproduce again.”
What a lovely lesson to be learnt.
all that we have amassed sits before us, shattered into ash Cress knows that she is weak, that she is broken in more ways than could possibly be explained. She struggles every day with the guilt of seeing her parents torn from life and to see one here, alive is surreal. Is Oxytocin alive as well? Could it even be possible? The girl can only hope as much. Maybe, once, they could have been the pieces that could mend her and make her whole once more, but Kindling is quickly disproving that. No, Kindling is the opposite of what she needs right now and she cannot stop the words that begin to spill unwanted from her lips.
“Fuck you,” she begins and there is fire on her tongue, heating the air around them. Kindling tells her to hush and Cress bares her teeth, taking another step back from her dam. How dare she. How dare she, of all horses, tell her to hush. She can feel the disappointment, the pity, rushing off of her mother in waves and she is having none of it. She is not the daughter that Kindling expected her to be but she is not a failure. She has done more with her life than Kindling has accomplished in her pathetic one and she is not a failure.
“Do you think I give a fuck if I am breaking?” she snarls, each exhale bringing forth a rush of flame. She cannot—will not—swallow them back any longer. “You left me to die, Mother.” And the word is sarcastic, because Kindling does not deserve the title of Mother. She never has—she failed her other children before her just as she failed Cress. Cress has never even met her older siblings (she hardly even knows their names, only that one of them was queen after their dam).
She is angry but she is calm, cold. The dragon in her chest stirs angrily and she breathes flames; they coat her tongue and she knows exactly what she is doing. Only minutes ago she was excited to see Kindling and emotional at the mere thought that Kindling was still alive—now she is calculating and filled with fire and she wants nothing more than to knock her down a peg or two. Kindling may believe that she is pushing all of the right buttons—and oh, how she is, how she is tearing Cress apart with every word that leaves her mouth—but Cress knows a few things herself.
“You think of me as a failure?” she asks quietly, taking a small step forward. The flames trailing her tongue wind their way up her face but she doesn’t let them burn her; she will not let her own flames harm her in any way. “ You were the failure, Kindling. You failed the Valley and you failed your family. You failed my father. You failed your kingdom. They hated you, Kindling. They rejoiced when you renounced your throne! I have lived there for many years now and I have heard all of the tales and all the murmurings of the queen who wanted to set the Valley ablaze but barely left it smoldering. You and your would-be lover.”
Maybe this is what she wants. Maybe Kindling wants her to fight fire with fire, but Kindling has no flames of her own; she never did and she never will. “Father’s probably found some other would-be queen to fuck by now, after you abandoned him. He’s probably gotten someone who’s loyal to him now.” The words hurt—she doesn’t even know that he’s really, truly alive—but she is aiming to hurt as much as Kindling is. She chooses the words that will drive the deepest and pierce her the most. “You were a sniveling, whiny queen. It’s no wonder if he no longer wants you.”
She takes another step closer, no longer afraid of the biting words. “You never should have become a mother because you failed all of your children, Kindling. My siblings most likely hate you and I am finding that I cannot blame them. The only failure here is you. I have helped start a fire that will keep the Valley ablaze for generations to come. I am not a failure.”
She means to engulf her mother in flames then, and opens her maw to deliver the blow. “I could kill you right here, Mother. I am not a failure.”
She doesn’t need to prove anything to Kindling; she just wants to set the woman ablaze. See how she feels with a melted head. cress oxytocin x kindling
[note - she hasn't actually attacked kindling, so no powerplay here! she's just angry and is all "rawr i'ma attack you"]
infected.
Oh so the kitty has some fangs.
She is so much like her mother, regretfully so. Quick to respond, quick to speak, quick to say. She has much to learn—to much, almost. Our little baby doe has no sense of managing her emotions.
That much, is obvious.
And so much like the over-dramatic performance of sadness, the little doe goes into a raging fiend. And Kindling cannot say she is impressed. The girl is still a whimpering waste of skin, but now she has magic. Isn’t that fantastic? Much like how we gift alcoholics with licenses, we have gifted spastic females with magic.
007. Licensed to kill.
Kindling listens, it’s polite of course. After all, this is her daughter no matter how much Kindling regrets it. The levelness of this conversation means Kindling must allow Cress to speak her mind, and out of courtesy it is her job to listen. Courtesy. Hah. Who knew our fiery ex-queen still had it.
The child speaks as if she was there during her rule. The child speaks like she knows what happened, what went on, the complications, the mess. She speaks like she knows the history of her mother.
Oh, naive child. You weren’t even fucking born.
Sure, people talk. Certainly there is room for gossip and rumours. However this child has no real feel for what actually happened. The words that were said, the mistakes made, the decisions that took place. Cress has no recollection of what made her life possible.
Cress has no gratitude for the life she was given. And isn’t that yet another tick against her? Isn’t that just the cherry on top to Kindling’s growing “the point of never having you” cake?
“My oh my baby Cress, you have quite the temper. It must be scary, isn’t it?” She gives no regard to the flames tickling at her heels, engulfing her body. She shows know restraint or suffocation as orange light flickers around her and her temperature begins to get warmer. She looks comfortable, happy even.
Happy because Cress will finally be doing her the favour that Kindling has been longing for—death.
“It must be scary to realize you are more like me than you ever imagined,” her voice is a whisper, hardly loud enough for her daughter to hear. She is holding a steady rhythm of heart rate and exhaling appropriately. She is focusing her entire energy on being relaxed.
It isn’t easy, but Kindling has learnt to master the art of acting.
She takes another two steps closer to her daughter, watching how her daughter fumes and inhaling the scent of unfamiliarity floating off her coat. Kindling sees the cracks of her child, the damage that has been inflicted. She sees the emotional burden this child carries, and the ownership it comes with. Her daughter is a spitting image of Kindling.
Maybe that is why her children fail.
They are far too much like Kindling. Like how Kindling was. Young, temperamental, emotional, unintelligent.
I had to earn this mental stability. I had to learn the trade of socializing.
“You can be so much better than this, Cress,” she is still whispering, her voice softening—really softening, not fake softening. She is exposing herself for a flicker of a second, point two of a second. “I can help you do things Cress that I am not sure you are aware you are capable of. You’re a mess, you’re an emotional wreck, you might as well be Juliet. But I can help you. I can’t be your mother Cress, but I can be someone who has an impact on your life.
“I have plans Cress, and you can be in on them should you want. Of course, you can kill me now and never know what laid beyond the sunrise. Or, there is no shame in just turning and walking away. But once you leave, you might miss out on the opportunity that brought you here.”
Fate. It’s a fickle bitch.
all that we have amassed sits before us, shattered into ash Cress has killed before. It wasn’t her choice to kill her future Self in order to free herself from the dark god’s chamber and not a day goes by that Cress doesn’t vividly remember the hot, metallic taste of her own blood in her mouth. She will never forget how it felt to pierce the heart of her future Self and tear the dying organ from the woman’s breast, dropping it on the ground for the god to devour. She had been freed then, and he had fulfilled his twisted desires—he had turned them all into killers. It is something she will relive until the day she dies.
Cress tries not to, but she catches her mother’s eye just as Kindling mentions her temper, and the golden girl snorts. “If I lived in fear of my own temper I would never leave the confines of my mind,” she snaps, lips pulled back over her teeth. She opens her jaws again and a tongue of flame springs from deep within her throat, soaring past Kindling to strike a tree behind her. A threat, maybe. More fire crackles at the back of her mouth, and she knows that this time her aim will be true; she will show her mother what it is like to have a face full of flames.
The fire bursts forth just as she catches the expression on Kindling’s face and though she tries to stop the flames, it is too late. She snaps shut her mouth and uses the one power she knows she can manipulate in every way she asks—her healing. She sends a barrier to block the flames and what engulfs Kindling instead is a warm, healing breeze. If any of the flames had touched her the marks were instantly healed; she feels the energy leave her as she protects her dam from the worst of the flames.
“You want me to kill you,” she says incredulously as Kindling takes several steps forward, bridging the gap between mother and daughter. She is still angry—she still wants to inflict the same amount of pain upon Kindling that Kindling has forced upon her—but she cannot bring herself to step back. The mere thought of her mother being so close makes her feel ill—so much has changed in so little time—and she almost doesn’t hear what Kindling says next.
Her voice has softened and Cress can sense the real emotion in it, but she doesn’t trust her. The words— “I can’t be your mother, Cress”—burn worse than any fire in her heart and for a split second she cannot breathe, cannot think. The flames in the back of her throat are extinguished as she swallows, the fire dying as quickly as it had come, and she stares at her pathetic excuse of a mother, wondering what is going to come next.
“Why?” she rasps, hardly noticing that she had let her fire burn her after all, nearly destroying her vocal chords. She can fix those later—this, though? She’s not so sure about. “You want me to kill you, you want me to be your ally. You want to have an impact on my life but in the same breath you tell me that you cannot be my mother. Why, Kindling?”
If Kindling does not wish to be her dam then Cress has no reason to call her Mother ever again, even mockingly. All she wants to know is why.
“Why did you leave me, if you thought I would be strong? Why can’t you be my mother now?” Why can’t she teach Cress, as a mother would, how to be strong and intelligent and powerful?
“Give me one good answer as to why I shouldn’t burn you as my dragon did to me.” cress oxytocin x kindling
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