11-24-2018, 08:03 PM
I do not recognize the emotions that mar the familiar face of my oldest son. This is not the happy-eyed colt I remember, nor the somber teen I had been forced to leave in Sylva. This is someone else entirely, a man who looks like my Delta. I had greeted him with a warm and easy smile, but the look he gives me is absent of emotion entirely, and there is no visible pleasure on his dark face at seeing me.
What had happened?
What had his father possibly told him that might have turned him against me so readily?
My smiles fades slowly, the confusion on my face shoved aside for obvious hurt at his implication. I flinch as though the barb of his words had almost been tangible, but my child will never be the target of my infamous temper. I swallow my defense, because to never speak poorly of his father in front of him is another vow I’d sworn to myself. He doesn’t need to know that his father gave me away when I was barely older than Delta, that he’d knowingly fed me to the wolves to advance his own political agenda. He doesn’t need to know that the colt that I’d birthed might have been his half-brother, or it might have been the bastard of any of the nameless Sylvans who’d taken advantage of my captivity.
He doesn’t need to know any of that, but I cannot help but remember it all at once.
I swallow a rising bitterness as he turns to go. Already?
“Why did you come to the Brilliant Pampas?” I ask his departing figure. I am not sure if I will get a response but the idea of not trying is one I cannot accept.
What had happened?
What had his father possibly told him that might have turned him against me so readily?
My smiles fades slowly, the confusion on my face shoved aside for obvious hurt at his implication. I flinch as though the barb of his words had almost been tangible, but my child will never be the target of my infamous temper. I swallow my defense, because to never speak poorly of his father in front of him is another vow I’d sworn to myself. He doesn’t need to know that his father gave me away when I was barely older than Delta, that he’d knowingly fed me to the wolves to advance his own political agenda. He doesn’t need to know that the colt that I’d birthed might have been his half-brother, or it might have been the bastard of any of the nameless Sylvans who’d taken advantage of my captivity.
He doesn’t need to know any of that, but I cannot help but remember it all at once.
I swallow a rising bitterness as he turns to go. Already?
“Why did you come to the Brilliant Pampas?” I ask his departing figure. I am not sure if I will get a response but the idea of not trying is one I cannot accept.
