[private] most nights i don't know anymore

[craft]

I was in the darkness, so darkness I became;

She doesn’t know, really, why she’s here.
She knows she is compelled here, that her feet led her to this unknown kingdom (oh, how she aches for the deserts, for the dry sands and baking sun). She doesn’t know what Lilliana has seen, or even who the mare is, though Lilliana has seen some of the worst parts of her, parts Craft pretends don’t exist.
She pretends she isn’t wicked, see, that there is not a cruel streak running through her like a gold vein in the rock.
She pretends she isn’t wicked and so she smiles, standing beside Anatomy. She lets her speak, and she is glad, because she doesn’t know what she would say. She is still so confused, so much of the time, like she is trying to complete a puzzle with too many pieces missing. All she sees are the gaps.
“Protection,” she echoes, “and blessings for the children.”
As if she did not scorn her own son, born black and cursed from her loins.
She pretends she isn’t wicked.

She smiles as the pale stallion approaches, a hint of her old kingdom diplomacy coming back. She nods her head to him, listens to his name, his question.
“I think,” she says, “that Lilliana…helped us. And we’re very grateful.”
She is vaguely, purposefully so. She is compelled by forces she doesn’t understand. But she is here, in this strange kingdom, and polite as she waits to move on, to tour the land that she might call a home.

Craft

SORRY i took a hundred years but here she is!