i was the match and you were the rock [KINDLING]

[Cress]

all that we have amassed sits before us, shattered into ash

One ability that Cress hasn’t had the opportunity to truly test is her kingdom-granted empathy. She was granted the power only weeks after she first ventured into the Valley after Demian announced her promotion. It wasn’t a promotion she was ready for (or even a promotion she deserved) but Demian needed someone to step up and take the reins and he had somehow chosen Cress as the most qualified for the job. Talk about nerve-wracking. She has done her best to meet his expectations, but being captured by hellhounds and tortured for weeks (or so it felt) will put a bit of a halt to one’s ambitions.

I am not my mistakes, she tells herself daily, and so far it is working. She has been too busy focusing on her own emotions to tune in to how someone else is feeling. Her mental health has been the most important thing lately—months have passed and she is only just now beginning to feel normal again. It hasn’t been the easiest thing but she’s been able to surround herself with the darkness of the Valley and just rest. The nightmares are finally starting to fade away and so she feels like it is safe to leave her haven once more.

We all see how that worked out. Maybe she wasn’t ready.

Cress’ mother allows for the golden girl to nearly collapse into her dam’s side, but in her emotional state she is weak. She doesn’t try to pull her empathy into the deepest confines of her mind and tendrils of it sneak out, embracing Kindling’s mind—what she finds there is not what Cress expects from her mother at all. The tail flick is accompanied by a flash of annoyance and Cress trembles. Is Kindling not happy to see her? Does she hate Cress, too? All at once it is all too much for the golden child and she breaks away from her mother, breaking away from the comforting words and the returned embrace.

It is all fake.

“Why are you lying?” she snaps, tears streaming openly down her face as she glares at her dam. “You’re not happy to see me; stop lying to me. You’re not sorry.” Betrayal cracks her angry exterior and the hurt is plain in her eyes, but she cannot stop herself. She is her father’s fire and her mother’s harsh words and she cannot be put out. She has survived far too much to be put through a betrayal as sharp as this, twisting and burning in her heart. The fire in her chest is awakening and she has to swallow fire to get the words out.

“I’m not beautiful, I am a disaster torn apart by the ravages of time and circumstance. I am scarred and terrified of the world and my parents abandoned me. I was only weeks old and you abandoned me. In the middle of an earthquake!” She is screaming now and she cannot stop the tears; she cannot pull herself back together like she normally can. She is too far gone. “My legs broke and I thought I was going to die; I discovered how to heal and it took me months to put myself back together. I thought you dead. You and Father both.”

She knows that Carnage took her beauty when he took her innocence, and her mother’s lies just bring that to the surface. Her ears were torn away by fire and her breast is marked with a vicious dragon, the same one living inside her heart and kindling the flames on her tongue. Mother cannot see it, but there is a hideous scar on her forehead, just under the dirty tuffs of blonde mane. She is not beautiful. She has no need for beauty when her entire heart has been given to her kingdom. She doesn’t need Kindling or the memory of her father’s corpse.

Kindling is not how she remembers her mother.
Maybe that memory was something all in her head.

cress

oxytocin x kindling