05-27-2021, 12:04 AM
NEUNA
Still, the third daughter is unmoved. Unconvinced, though the shadow pup has already begun to stir. (This child is more fun, more adventurous than the girl it is bound to! How the pup hungers for this sort of adventure!) The girl calls the pup back because she is wary of strangers still, even when they are children. Even when their eyes are bright. Even when they are eager and prone to childish whimsy.
The pup curls itself around her heels and she watches, always watches.
He asks how she knows and she glances at the sky. She remembers the darkness. The terrible, terrible darkness. And then her father’s terrible anger, how his fury was as black as the rest of him. How he cast them all away and now the only thing she has left of him is the fog that had curled sweetly around her legs and the pup that nips at her ankle, wanting.
“Everyone knows that,” she answers, though she’s not certain it’s true.
But she has never heard of fathers who are stars. Her father is darkness, impenetrable. The same kind of darkness that had descended over all of Beqanna. Her father is the opposite of a star, she thinks. He is a black hole, the reaper. (And yet she loves him all the same, the third daughter, because it is all she knows how to do.)
“Maybe he’s not really a star,” she challenges. Because she is a thing built for love, to command love, but she is her father’s daughter. She is her mother’s daughter. It is not said with malice but she will not be made a fool of either.
The pup curls itself around her heels and she watches, always watches.
He asks how she knows and she glances at the sky. She remembers the darkness. The terrible, terrible darkness. And then her father’s terrible anger, how his fury was as black as the rest of him. How he cast them all away and now the only thing she has left of him is the fog that had curled sweetly around her legs and the pup that nips at her ankle, wanting.
“Everyone knows that,” she answers, though she’s not certain it’s true.
But she has never heard of fathers who are stars. Her father is darkness, impenetrable. The same kind of darkness that had descended over all of Beqanna. Her father is the opposite of a star, she thinks. He is a black hole, the reaper. (And yet she loves him all the same, the third daughter, because it is all she knows how to do.)
“Maybe he’s not really a star,” she challenges. Because she is a thing built for love, to command love, but she is her father’s daughter. She is her mother’s daughter. It is not said with malice but she will not be made a fool of either.
@[Benjamen]