[private] i feel a bad moon rising | elio

[Lepis]

staring at the ceiling in the dark same old empty feeling in your heart That she has raised a child so sensitive is a puzzle to Lepis. No, not that he is sensitive – they all knew their emotion better than the average creature – but rather that he is so easily swayed, so affected by what is said to him. The discomfort in her eyes brings worry to her own. It had been meant playfully, lightly, and yet she feels as though she’s accidentally buffeted him with a wing rather than told him where his invisibility had come from. A better mother might have apologized, might have explained what she had meant. Lepis does try to be a good mother, but there are some things that she cannot do. Apologizing for an imagined offense is one of them, and so she allows the discomfort in his eyes to remain. He will learn someday, she thinks. He will learn that being wounded once – no matter how large the scar it leaves – is not indicative of an entirely violent world. A lesson his father might have taught him, she thinks, had he spent the earliest days of his curse seeking her help rather than seducing another woman. (Accepting that the curse was inevitable from the beginning is yet another thing that it seems Lepis cannot do). Elio asks if she knows where Wolfbane is, and Lepis shakes her head. There is only so much searching one horse can do, and that is even less when the one she hunts is as prone to change his shape as he is his color. Her son asks if he will come after them, and Lepis pauses. “He might,” she answers, “But there is no way of knowing.” I want to help find him, Elio says, and the mare smiles despite herself. Of course he does. He might be a puzzle to her at times, but there are some things that she is sure of, parts of herself and her former husband that she recognizes even when they are troublesome. “That wouldn’t be safe,” she tells him with a shake of her head, though it is clear from her expression that she does not intend this to end the conversation entirely. “But you could help another way, help make sure that we are prepared when he comes.” She waits, knowing that what she has to propose is not as thrilling as a hunt. If he seems amenable she tells him, clear instructions that might serve to mend a rift that Wolfbane has caused. @[elio] LEPIS staring at the bottom of your glass-- hoping one day you’ll make a dream last but dreams come slow and they go so fast