you could break my heart in two, but when it heals, it beats for you
She is many things now, a leader, a wife, a lover, a conspirator, a friend, and most importantly a mother. Though there are times that one of those facets or another seems to eclipse the rest at the end of the day when she climbs back up into the little meadow she has set aside for herself she is only the very last and greatest of these.
Her yearlings still come up to sleep here, usually later than she would like to see them but her back turned ears are the only disapproval she bothers with. She is happy they do not try and curl together elsewhere and leave her wondering what has become of them. Valek too comes home most nights, though he is rapidly nearing the age where he will select his own place of shelter for now he still comes up to watch over his mother and pick on Kelynen until Risk chases him off and wraps herself around her brother. The youngest and smallest of them, Soothe, she tucks into her side to stave off the melancholy aspect of watching them all grow up and out of the nest.
Seeing them preparing to face the world she is proud. Of Valek’s ambition and strength, or Risks spirit and sweetness. As Kelynen grows more like his father she finds herself grudgingly pleased to have borne his sire such a handsome boy. Finally Soothe, delicate and beautiful, the angel boy’s loveliness making a strong showing in the child.
Still, she worries how well they will be suited to face the Beqanna of tomorrow though she plans to remain a part of it for many, many years to come Kensa will not be able to protect and keep them through all that may transpire. With Soothe’s birth she has had three children who carry none of the adaptations or enhancements of their parents (Brunhilde too, though the plague had perhaps altered her in utero to give her gifts independent of Kensa and Litotes) and Kensa is certain the fault lies with her. It feels like she has failed them.
Is it not her responsibility as their mother to give them a better start in the world that she herself had?
Kensa has not forgotten Djinni or the wish. In fact tonight she thinks of nothing else. She watches little Soothe sleeping fast on the ground. Valek, his feet in the stream, not tired yet but watching the valley below through the birch trunks. And Kelynen, who should have a Lion in him to play with Risk’s own cat, but doesnt, asleep with his head slung over the filly’s hip. She cannot make her wish for one and not the others, give to Valek what Kel and Soothe deserve just as much.
It is too late for these, but there will be others after them little faces and names she has not yet even dreamed of and it will break her heart to fail them too.
She whickers to Valek, a rarely used signal for him to mind the meadow to which he nods his golden face once without question. He would understand what she plans if she told him but perhaps only because he does not know what it is he should be.
From the meadow the Primarch turns up the mountain rather than down, climbing past the tree line. The moon is full and illuminates her path with cool white light. Her hooves sound against stone as she moves out onto a wide sloping ridge strewn with mountain daisies growing low and spindly out of the cracked ground. When she speaks it as if to no one, her voice ringing clean and clear into the night. “Djinni, I want to give my sons and daughters the best start in the world. I have chosen my wish.” She knows somehow that the magician will hear this, wherever she may be. “I wish to have my children inherit the gifts of their parents. I know that this is not always possible but whatever gate within me bars the way, I wish for it to be opened.”
Kensa quiets, her ochre eyes roaming the clouds below, and the shifting lands of Beqanna beyond those, where her children will go on to live long after she is memory. They may never know what she wished for them or the depth of her love but at least she has given them this.
Kensa
@[Djinni]
