Sochi;

[sochi]

Sochi

darling, you're wild-eyed, empty, and tongue-tied
maybe you need me or maybe you don't

Sochi is not the type to wax poetic about motherhood or feel tears streaming down her cheeks at pride in her daughter. She has been through too much, experienced too much, to let herself become that vulnerable over anything—but she still feels pride when she looks at her daughter. Her beautiful, fierce daughter with her own eyes peering back up at her, that swath of blue on her forehead, that ferocity in every line of her body, her face. Her daughter comes up and presses into the thick tiger fur, and Sochi allows it for a moment, a low grumble of approval in her throat, her wide head bumping her daughter.

When Reia does step away, Sochi shifts back into her equine form, the motion smooth and liquid, the mare shedding one body for another. It is a transition that she has honed over time, come to control with an ease. As her daughter begins to share, Sochi sniffs, eyes sharpening slightly. “The other children are weak,” she says simply, finding the matter distasteful. “They fear what they cannot control.”

Sochi would not tolerate her daughter into a spoiled brat, would not tolerate her not understanding her place in the pack, but with other children? She is free to assert herself in such situations, to rise as the natural leader. Reia was not to answer to them or cow before them.

“And you cannot be controlled, daughter.”

The words are stern, with an underlying meaning, a reminder. Reia was fierce and proud and she was to continue  living that way. “Good. You never need to apologize to prey for being a predator, Reia.” There is steel beneath her voice, but a kindness in the only way that she knows how. “Never.”

playing the slow rooms, howling at half moons
if you are a Queen then, honey, I am a wolf

@[Reia]