[private] as the sun sinks in the sea - aletta

[aletta]

Oh, the things that Aletta could tell Chasity about daughters.

The silver mare has raised three. The first, Brielle, was all her fire and Valerio’s obstinance. (The winds had tested her patience with that child.) Her youngest two had been timid, sweet things. Lilliana had never wanted to venture far from her side and Aislynn had been a quiet filly, with a sweetness that often put her in mind of her serene dam, Starlet.

(She has always considered herself fortunate that her boys took after their sire; there was a constant in them that she could only assume came from the line of Ichiro.)

Her brow lifts with amusement at the girl’s proclamation. Not a fish but a dolphin. In her youth, Aletta hadn’t known such creatures existed. That had been a magical discovery that came with the visual realizations of things like oceans. (She had heard of those - even those who had dwelled so close to the heavens knew about the enormity of the sea. It was the only thing that could perhaps challenge the peaks of her youth.)

Aletta smiles kindly instead of answering. While she has been many things, socially graceful has never been one of them and she doesn’t want to upset the child. Time has taught her that her dry humor isn’t always appreciated.

Shimmering in the summer light, the grey mare watches the child and her memories become rekindled beneath the sunshine. She remembers those days with Brynn as they had watched Malachi and Kalina romp in the shallows of Paraiso’s lake much like this pale child does now. Her heart suddenly aches  and she lets the pain go running with the filly.

"Did you?” Aletta queries honestly, turning her attention to the mother now, curious about those rivers that @[Chasity] had lived beside. Her distracted expression becomes present and she adds, "I grew up in the Mountains. There was no place higher we could go and yet I always longed for the valleys and rivers below,” says the former Regent.

Funny, she thinks, how life can flow that way.

Shaking away the memories, Aletta considers her current company. Not at all, her expression says. No need to apologize. She has had enough children to know that mothers can’t always be in control of their antics. "A distraction, I suppose,” the gray mare says plainly. She isn’t entirely sure what she is looking for out here, in Beqanna. (Beyond, the stars had murmured and so she is here; beyond.) 

"And yourself?” she asks the other mare, looking downstream at the ‘dolphin’ who plays in the currents. "Is there a reason you stay by the River instead of heading out to the sea?”