08-12-2021, 03:05 PM
with rushing thread of brazen spindles.
How rarely she strays from the shores of Ischia, from the warm huddle of her mother and sisters, from the familiar glow of their collective magic.
But she is such a tender-hearted thing, Neuna, arguably the softest of the three daughters. Still she mourns the loss of the father, though it has been years now since they left him in Pangea and found their home beside the sea. Sometimes she sends the shadow wolf to find him because she does not dare return to Pangea herself and the wolf (no longer a pup just as she is no longer a filly) comes back to report that the father is not what she remembers him to be. The wolf tells her there is nothing left in Pangea worth her missing, her grief, but Neuna is a thing built of love, for love, and her capacity for mourning is great. She will never stop missing her father, even if there is nothing left worth missing.
She knows she will not find him by the river, but she does not dare return to Pangea. (She has not asked why her mother spirited them away from there because she does not wish to cause her mother any undue pain, you see, not because she thinks her mother would not tell her the truth.)
The wolf moves easily through the shadows up ahead, head down, admonishing her for this colossal waste of time. (A trip to the river! For what! Ischia is surrounded by water!) But Neuna is such a brutally kind thing and she grins, reminds the wolf that it could have stayed behind, and they walk the rest of the way to the river’s edge in silence.
“You’re angry,” she says out loud to the wolf when they arrive but the wolf does not reply, merely slinks away into the shadows and she watches it with a rueful smile. This thing was built by her father, it does not know how to be kind. She, too, was built by her father but her mother had equal influence.
It is when she finally turns her gaze away from the wolf, which has blended into the shadows by now, that she realizes she is not alone at the water’s edge. She blinks at the stranger, haloed as he is in white light as they all are (something wrong with the eyes rather than anything wrong with him), and smiles. “Oh, hello,” she murmurs, “I hope I haven’t disturbed you.”
But she is such a tender-hearted thing, Neuna, arguably the softest of the three daughters. Still she mourns the loss of the father, though it has been years now since they left him in Pangea and found their home beside the sea. Sometimes she sends the shadow wolf to find him because she does not dare return to Pangea herself and the wolf (no longer a pup just as she is no longer a filly) comes back to report that the father is not what she remembers him to be. The wolf tells her there is nothing left in Pangea worth her missing, her grief, but Neuna is a thing built of love, for love, and her capacity for mourning is great. She will never stop missing her father, even if there is nothing left worth missing.
She knows she will not find him by the river, but she does not dare return to Pangea. (She has not asked why her mother spirited them away from there because she does not wish to cause her mother any undue pain, you see, not because she thinks her mother would not tell her the truth.)
The wolf moves easily through the shadows up ahead, head down, admonishing her for this colossal waste of time. (A trip to the river! For what! Ischia is surrounded by water!) But Neuna is such a brutally kind thing and she grins, reminds the wolf that it could have stayed behind, and they walk the rest of the way to the river’s edge in silence.
“You’re angry,” she says out loud to the wolf when they arrive but the wolf does not reply, merely slinks away into the shadows and she watches it with a rueful smile. This thing was built by her father, it does not know how to be kind. She, too, was built by her father but her mother had equal influence.
It is when she finally turns her gaze away from the wolf, which has blended into the shadows by now, that she realizes she is not alone at the water’s edge. She blinks at the stranger, haloed as he is in white light as they all are (something wrong with the eyes rather than anything wrong with him), and smiles. “Oh, hello,” she murmurs, “I hope I haven’t disturbed you.”
@Ashhal