She has often turned back into her past to hit replay over, and over again. She has often wondered where she would be if she hadn’t given herself away to Atrox, and then to Barret. She turns back the pages of her memory to the times spent following the will of the webs with her mother. She had never understood them. She did not have the gift that her mother had.
Oh, how she longs for their guidance now.
She traces an old scar that climbs up a grassy knoll. Magdalena follows along, nipping at her mother’s tail. Coatl lags behind, hesitant to take his eyes off of the treeline. His skin prickles as he turns to follow his mother and sister, but it is not the treeline that yields danger this time.
Suddenly, as if by magic, there is stallion in their path.
Locklyn’s breath catches, and Coatl snorts, but Magdalena is slow to realize what is going on (her nose still busy with her mother’s tail). Then he speaks, and his voice is strange to the young foals, but so achingly familiar to Locklyn.
“What do you see?” he says, and suddenly the smoke and ash arises.
She had once asked him the same. Once, as he wandered through the starways - always just out of reach of her. That, her, who was everything that Locklyn wasn’t, and isn’t. Locklyn has never been blazing sunsets, and passionate fury. Locklyn has never been anything; she has just been… there.
“Ghosts.” She says, as her children rally to her, peeking out curiously behind their mother. Locklyn is almost thankful for the daylight, but fear still escapes through prickled skin.
What is she to say to him? Surely, he knows that these children are his, but Locklyn doesn’t expect him to be a father. Afterall, Locklyn herself had grown up fatherless, and Liselle had followed suit. Locklyn finds it strange to think of rearing children any other way except alone. That is not to say she had not once dreamed of a different life. Years she had spent in the mists of Mourning Mountains waiting for Atrox, but like she was for Barret, she had been little more than a place to lie his angst upon: a temporary release from their strife. Creation is easy for men.
He may not say her name, and even if he claimed he did not know her, Locklyn would know it to be a lie. He looks so different in the daylight, but still so utterly the same. She looks to her children.
“Coatl, Magdalena, this is your father. Say hello.” she says, pushing past the angst that chokes her heart, and strangles her resolve.
Magdalena is oblivious to her mother’s strife, and trots out from behind her shadow. Locklyn holds her breath. She does not trust Barret; She knows better than that.
“I’ve never met a ghost before.” says the little bay filly to the burning man, looking at him expectantly.
____________________
l o c k l y n
belgarath x laiken |
|
@[Barret]
|
