The children are skeletons, dead before they ever lived, and she breathes their names into their bones, apologetic. They deserve a better mother than her. She knows this is true already, because she cannot see past the delicate curls of those still-soft skeletons, because she forgets, so easily, that there is fleshinvisible to her deceitful eyes. Iska rises first, fierce, with shadows collecting at her feet and the sight of it makes her vision swim, panic rising like cold water, filling her lungs. The filly nurses and Beryl chokes.
No.
Every day that Beryl has lived, almost since the beginning, she has lived in fear, in anger, in regret. Every step has taken her in the wrong direction, but they all started with that first thoughtless step into the shadows, with thoughts of the mythical Pangea her mother had painted dancing bright in her mind. Perhaps Iska, seeking only darkness, warmth, and her mother, would go nowhere but back to the golden mare's side, but Beryl finds herself suddenly unwilling to flirt with that risk. The black walls are thrown asunder, letting the forest's dappled spring light shine through, finally waking the colt who protests softly from his place on the ground and tucks his head against his chest as if to hide his eyeless skull from the sunlight shining through his shoulder blades.
All but one patch of darkness recedes. He should be bones like the rest, but the shadows recognize him as they surge past his sleeping shape and cling to still, black, skin, like streamers of fog catching on leaves. Behind her, the colt has finally found his feet - and his sister, who he nips at with pink, toothless gums, ignoring the slightly blurred shapes of his parents just ahead - and if Cassian were awake, he might see the way she steps forward as if to lunge, sharp-toothed and cat-eyed, when she sees the figure there, waiting. The lioness is there in an instant, in the red and bright anger that floods her vision when she sees the trespasser, but he is saved by the darkness now rolling away from him again, revealing bones lit faintly by his crooked halo.
"Cassian." A single word, and there's a storm in her breast where the anger is fading. Regret blooms like a blade in her side. She wants to apologize - for disappearing, for avoiding him, for there being children. None of this is his fault, it's all her, it's always her. She wants to tell him that he doesn't have to worry about them, but the words never find her tongue, stopped up by the well of relief that he's found her - found them - and maybe she doesn't have to be alone.
"I--" her words stagger in her throat, unsure, not ready to assume that this is anything more than an accident, that he'll stay, that she'll stay, "I'm glad your here."
No.
Every day that Beryl has lived, almost since the beginning, she has lived in fear, in anger, in regret. Every step has taken her in the wrong direction, but they all started with that first thoughtless step into the shadows, with thoughts of the mythical Pangea her mother had painted dancing bright in her mind. Perhaps Iska, seeking only darkness, warmth, and her mother, would go nowhere but back to the golden mare's side, but Beryl finds herself suddenly unwilling to flirt with that risk. The black walls are thrown asunder, letting the forest's dappled spring light shine through, finally waking the colt who protests softly from his place on the ground and tucks his head against his chest as if to hide his eyeless skull from the sunlight shining through his shoulder blades.
All but one patch of darkness recedes. He should be bones like the rest, but the shadows recognize him as they surge past his sleeping shape and cling to still, black, skin, like streamers of fog catching on leaves. Behind her, the colt has finally found his feet - and his sister, who he nips at with pink, toothless gums, ignoring the slightly blurred shapes of his parents just ahead - and if Cassian were awake, he might see the way she steps forward as if to lunge, sharp-toothed and cat-eyed, when she sees the figure there, waiting. The lioness is there in an instant, in the red and bright anger that floods her vision when she sees the trespasser, but he is saved by the darkness now rolling away from him again, revealing bones lit faintly by his crooked halo.
"Cassian." A single word, and there's a storm in her breast where the anger is fading. Regret blooms like a blade in her side. She wants to apologize - for disappearing, for avoiding him, for there being children. None of this is his fault, it's all her, it's always her. She wants to tell him that he doesn't have to worry about them, but the words never find her tongue, stopped up by the well of relief that he's found her - found them - and maybe she doesn't have to be alone.
"I--" her words stagger in her throat, unsure, not ready to assume that this is anything more than an accident, that he'll stay, that she'll stay, "I'm glad your here."
@[Cassian]