[private] i feel a bad moon rising | elio

[Lepis]

again you’re gone, off on a different path than mine i'm left behind wondering if i should follow This conversation has been too-long delayed, and each time she had put it off the weight settled deeper in her belly. Finally the piebald mare can take it no more, finally she can stop rehashing the points of an discussion that is almost a decade old. ’The spring they turn two’, they’d agreed, when they’d be old enough to really understand what it meant. Lepis has been a part of this only three times before, and she’s never been the one to start it. What if she forgets something? What if she can’t properly explain and he doesn’t understand? Her role has been to listen to the recitation of history, to add the appropriate emotions to enhance the gravity of what the children are being taught. What if she can’t do it by herself? The cocktail of emotions that comes with that last worry is what has so delayed her. Lepis has no antidote to it, had wept and sighed and yelled into the empty canyons of Loess to no avail in an effort to free herself. There is something to be said for closure, Lepis thinks, and something to be said for the lack of it. Today she takes a deep breath, and steps out into the sunshine. It is early morning in her favorite place in Beqanna, and the sunshine on her face is warm. The water trickling from the rock at the mouth of her shadowed overhang is cold and fresh, and the orange tree a few paces away always has ripe fruit this time of year. Her belly is too knotted to eat, the conversation to come taking up seemingly tangible space. Having told Elio where and when to meet her during their last encounter, Lepis arrives before her youngest sun. The shadow of a slippery elm and a trio of majesty palms mark a spot that will remain cool even during the midday heat. This is not a short conversation, Lepis knows, and would rather not chase the shade as they might otherwise need to. A Loessian summer is not something to deal with without something between one’s body and the sun, after all. Shaking out her wings, the dun mare settles herself, but keeps her senses alert for Elio’s arrival. LEPIS i’m the one who sees you home-- but now i’m lost in the woods and i don’t know what path you are on

@[Elio]