i never said that i would be your lover
i never said that i would be your friend
i never said that i would take no other
In the moment Kensa drops to the earth Litotes stumbles back and fear rings her topaz eyes in white because he isn’t staying, is he even here at all? Panic narrows her vision as her hooves make useless tracks in the dirt and sand and the creature the rejoins her is a white lion whose presence forces a primal sound from her throat. It’s the fear tied into her last painful memory of that lion that actually reminds her who he is.
He stands at her back, and the fear subsides, and she becomes only a wild laboring thing, struggling in the dirt.
The child that slides into the world has the great fortune of being well and whole and sneezes himself into breathing when the great white cat inspects him. His mother does not move to look at him or reach for him like she had with Brunhilde or Valek. He is a plain thing by the standards set by his siblings. Rich palomino, with a blazed face - so like his mother’s had once been - White limbs, but none of the gold that ought to delineate the colored hide from the white markings as in his mother and elder brother. He is beautiful and wrong.
And she knows it without seeing him.
Lie’s white lion leaps up to her still head, pressing kisses and oaths of affection into her skin and the Primarch only closes her eyes. When he lies down before her she draws a long, deep breath, slowly raising her head and rolling onto her elbow. “I am...and you’re really here.” She says once more, tears washing the dirt and apathy out of her dilated eyes. Kensa gazes at him a moment more, before looking back toward the boy, sticky, wet, filthy with dirt and fluids still getting his bearings in his new world.
Kensa looks and feels nothing. Not that sweet, painful rush of love she’s felt all the times before. Not the pride and gut-wrenching sensation of responsibility. Nothing at all.
When she had carried him his kicks had made her smile, left her excited for another child. Losing Lie had diminished that some, but it had still been there from time to time. She tries to recall that as she gets to her feet, to summon up the things she should be feeling. She cleans him, but it is hard to do it with the care she would give any of the others. I don’t want him. The thought is heavy and dreadful but as true as anything she’s ever uttered aloud. When she glances at the boy’s father she aches at the betrayal she feels she is commiting by not loving this son like the last. So Kensa forces a smile, and it appears she is only tired not an abominable and unloving dam.
“Kelynen.” A name meaning, among other things love. A command to herself, an apology to the boy she can hardly be bothered to touch. He whimpers a bit, and she snorts, nudging him as he takes longer than Valek or Brunhilde to find his feet. Once, at long last he is nursing at her side (she hopes his father is enamored enough with him for the both of them) Kensa her full attention back to Litotes. She’s wanted to speak to him all this while and couldn't, afraid the inattention to their son would make her even more horrible and obvious to her husband.
“Are you alright Litotes? I watched you die...I saw you dead and now you’re here and you’re you.” She extends her muzzle, to touch him and find him solid again, she’ll probably do that 100 times before they can part again.
@[litotes]
