DAWN
it must be about as hard as forgetting your best friend
As it turns out, retiring to the Cove and settling down with most of her children had not worked out too well in her favor. When she had first gone back home, she had not even yet realized that she was pregnant with her sixth - and hopefully final - child, a little boy she named Sloane in the privacy of the foothills, surrounded by her family. He was the spitting image of his father, down to the snowflakes on his nose, and for a while she had been happy and at peace. She had missed Ghaul and Darkling dearly, but the boys had been old enough to choose their own path in life, and they had chosen to remain under the new Pangean queen.
But as it turns out, nothing good ever lasts. Sloane had grown and, curious about his absent father, had wandered off from their small family. Being that Nolin was the only other boy in their small family group, she doesn’t blame him for leaving - the women in her family are kind and caring, but also headstrong and willful. She didn’t mind him going off to find his father; if anything, price had glowed in her chest as he bravely set out on his own.
Eventually, even her other children had faded from the Cove; first Athena, desperate to make a name for herself; next Nolin, curious about the world outside of the East. Austra and Isilme, she assumes, are still around, but she doesn’t know where they are or what they are doing. She is content here, and at the very least, Ghaul is finally home, dragging along a little dragoness and their clutch of eggs. To think that she’s already become a grandmother, even by proxy… is this how Cress feels? Old, all the time?
Old, and lonely. As much as she loves her family, she misses her friends. She longs to race the hills with Kensa or stroll the beach with Lie. It is not so much fun to do either of those things by herself, but she has to accept that times change and everyone tends to change with it.
She just misses them so.
@[litotes]