His voice is serene and cradles the gentle arch of her ears like a lover. When her eyes close she almost sees him as a stallion and not as a boy, but the realization rolls over her when she looks at him with a wavering smile. This is her son and she knows how deeply she cherishes him, but when he speaks of the mutual adoration is he saying it with more fervor? Is there something more primal, more invested, swirling in their guts when their eyes meet? No, she cannot allow that, and she draws away from him slowly and looks across the meadow with piqued curiosity. ”I couldn’t have asked for a better son,” she forces herself to say, but the trap has already been laid and she is already his. There is no way that she can escape his grasp or his need to own her; the damage is done and she is his prisoner.
”We will find something together. You would think I would be able to, but I’m proving to be a dreadful mother to you,” only because they remain nomads in this new world. Not until the Gates had she truly bound herself to a land and those within it. Perhaps her father’s wanderlust has been instilled in her, or maybe her mother’s lack of stability. Her entire family is fleeting. She was – is – destined to fail him as a mother and yet she still couldn’t resist cradling him into her side that day and letting her heart embrace him as her own. As he grows, however, she finds herself struggling more with parenthood because she doesn’t know what to do, or where to turn. It’s just them in this room of shadowed faces.
Diverting their conversation she speaks quietly, admiringly of what once was. ”I wish I could show you what I could once do, before all of this.” Her hooves alternate in lifting in an excitable dance, a smile broadening across her white-bark lips. ”I had control over poison ivy,” she loved winding the vines of it along her leg, ”and I could shift into a badger.” It isn’t as intimidating or as impressive as her wolf-brother, but it was still something she enjoyed, and something she dreadfully misses.
Cerva