[private] won't you stay?

[Lepis]

the rain that falls upon your skin it's closer than my hands have been As though the day has not been long enough already, the first of her children that Lepis finds is the one with whom she is least prepared to face. The other three are older; she knows how to tell them. But Elio? He’s a child still, and a child burdened with his father’s invisibility and her empathic projection, not to mention the hurdles of the situation he is about to face. “Hey ‘Lio,” she says, stepping up beside the bicolored boy. The Comtesse’s blue muzzle passes gently along his dark red dorsal stripe, and then along the golden stripes of his neck, and finally a kiss pressed to his golden mask. So like his father’s, she thinks, a piercing reminder. Affection with her children has been done without thought, a trait she’s seen present in them as well. Even though Elio might be old enough to want to squirm away from her in front of his friends, she thinks he’s still young enough to let her wrap her neck over his and bury her face in his golden shoulder. “What’ve you been up to today?” She asks, unable yet to tell him of the enormous change that is about to overturn his life as he knows it. Elio will not be the first of her children to move at this young age, but it has never been something that she enjoys doing. Children should have one home until they’re old enough to leave it on their own, she thinks, that is surely best. Yet she’s been able to give it to so few of them, and she had been so certain that Elio would be one. Lepis has no favorite child – they are each the very best – but she cannot deny that it is Elio she pays the most attention. In the absence of his father, Lepis has done her best to fill the roles of two parents. She spends nearly twice as much time with him as she recalls doing so for her other children. Celina, who has her own memories of her father, had not needed so much, but there is no doubt that she has spent far more time with these two than the other five. lepis, comtesse of taiga queen of loess | queen of sylva | queen of the south lover of wolfbane | mother of six

@[elio]