02-19-2017, 11:50 AM
don't you tell me to deny it; i've done wrong and i want to suffer for my sins.
It was a word she had always found to be liberating; she needed nothing and no one to be whole. Her life had been a tangled, weaved web of complexity, and her heart was less burdened and her mind less burdened when isolated – or so, she would quietly insist. As the years went on and as time etched its way into her hollow bones and the fine lines of her chiseled face, her resolve had weakened, as her heart opened to allow for the warmth of motherhood.
Seeing the young girl before her crumble and collapse unto herself with unyielding, raw emotion causes a pang of sympathy to settle within the pit of her hollow belly. Her eyes, once unreadable, held hers, hazel to a deep, endless blue, a lacing of compassion encircling her pupils.
”Everything has been .. rearranged,” she utters hesitantly, crafting her words carefully. ”no, not rearranged – everything has changed.” A lopsided frown tugs at the corner of her lips, her gaze averting away from Kena to alleviate her own uneasiness. ”The world is different. None of the lands we knew before exist. There is no tundra, there is no valley – it is all gone.”
She is far from being at ease confronted with such raw emotion – it causes the nerves beneath her skin to crawl and quiver, stirring a restlessness within her at the sight of her unraveling before her. Empathy does not come naturally to her, and it leaves her breathless and weary – a gentle murmur, “there, there,” is all that she can muster, her weight shifting from one leg to another. Her body is wracked with deep, shattering waves of tears, and she is at a loss of how to comfort her.
The gentle breeze carries through, weaving delicately through the winding branches above and through her finely preened feathers, and for a moment, her mind is carried away with it – until a single name is uttered. Magnus. At last, the faintest semblance of a smile appears, though it soon changes into something resembling more of a smirk. Her slender neck dips, if only slightly – a nod of confirmation, her mind drifting to the image of mottled gold and sinewy muscle, a pillar of strength in the aftermath of a devastating storm. He not only made it out; he had thrived - but she had never had any doubt that he would.
”He did. He is alive, and well – there is a land to the east, on the border of the sea. It is a volcanic island, known as Tephra now. He has chosen not to take the title of King, but he is the leader. Come with me. I know that he would want to see you,” the guilt of not knowing what had happened to so many still weighed on him so heavily; his heart was guarded yet still somehow worn on his sleeve. ”he would want you to come.”
Ellyse