the rain that falls upon your skin
it's closer than my hands have been
The little sigh that he releases catches her flicking ears, and Lepis reaches out once more, smoothing the soft hair of his mane. She’d not meant t project, but of late she often does so without thought. While she is glad that it has helped Elio, she is torn between worry over her own lack of control and the fact that he has even needed it. A worried life is not one that Lepis wants for her children, and disappointment in herself simmers internally.
She allows him quiet to think, knowing that what she has offered is worth consideration. That he doesn’t give a flash answer pleases her; the ability to think critically is one that his older sister still doesn’t seem to have grasped. The thought of Celina causes another clench of her heart, and she is grateful that Elio answers now before her mind slips further down that trail. And yet this path is no better, for Elio asks about his father as though it is the most natural thing in the world.
Lepis has told her son the most splendid stories of his father since the moment he was born. He knows the tale of Wolfbane’s rise in Loess, of the great success of Loess under his rule. He knows how Wolfbane had led them to safety during the Plague, of how he has kept them safe against all threats, of how he is smart and charming and brave. To tell him those stories, and now to tell him that they will leave him behind? Does she want to go, her intuitive little redbird asks, and Lepis hugs him tighter so that he cannot see the shimmer of tears in her eyes.
“Sometimes these things happen,” she tells him when he asks why. “Sometimes families change, and there’s nothing we can do to stop them.”
Nothing she could do, the mare thinks with unexpected malice, but there was plenty Wolfbane could have done. Not leaving them would have been a fine start, and not seeking comfort in the arms of a woman not his wife another. But he had, and there is nothing that Lepis can do to reverse the wheel of time. So she bites down on the anger that rises in her chest, stuff it down tightly where there is no danger of passing it to Elio.
“But you and I will always be a family,” she reassures him. “Nothing will ever change that. I could show you all the places in Loess where I played when I was little, and you can meet your cousins.” Lepis tries to make it appealing, even presses the very smallest dose of excitement, and a bit of anticipation. Soft enough that he is unlikely to even feel it, this at least she can control.
@[Elio]
lepis, comtesse of taiga
queen of loess | queen of sylva | queen of the south
lover of wolfbane | mother of pteron, marni, tiercal, eyas, gale, celina, and elio
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