DAWN
i just killed off what was left of the optimist in me
After her brief foray with Caelestra and Vadar upon the beach, Dawn finds her children and collapses into them, sleeping long and deep and without a single trouble – she is with her children and nothing else matters, and her slumber is so deep that it keeps even the lightest of nightmares away.
The next evening comes all too soon, and reality hits her like a ton of bricks from the moment she opens her eyes. She clambers to her hooves, grunting past the aches in her muscles, and nudges Nolin to nurse. Once he has finished it is little Athena’s turn, and she sighs as the red filly latches on, swinging her nubby tail in lazy circles. She asks Isilme and Austra after Clayton, but they have not seen him, and the worry in her gut begins to grow deeper and deeper. He is supposed to be her co-ruler – he is supposed to be here with her, helping her to rule and navigate the coming stormy seas.
She’s not too sure that she can – or even wants to – do this alone.
Once the youngest of her brood have finished nursing she turns to leave them, knowing that she has many things to do in the coming days. She has to visit Pangea to talk to Litotes, and Hyaline to speak with Kensa. She’s not too sure that either of them wants anything to do with her, but she has to at least try. The children will be safe with her yearlings – she has to come back later for the four of them, anyways. She will never abandon any of her children, but she knows what she has to do to try and make things right with the other kingdoms.
Her hooves carry her to the shoreline as the sunlight begins to fade, and she can’t help but look for the place where she almost bled out upon the sands. She had bathed in the ocean before returning to her children, but her coat is still stained dark copper as opposed to its natural gold. What she finds instead is the lion-man, and hears his quiet nicker that floats down the beach to greet her. Raising her head and rolling back her shoulders she approaches him, squashing down the mixture of anger and despair that rises in her throat.
“Litotes,” she says quietly, formally, as she comes to a stop before him. She doesn’t want to take her eyes from him but she turns her gaze to the sea and the setting sun, and a few moments pass before she looks back to him. “I know you are not here to apologize, and I won’t ask that of you. What I do ask, however, is if you could possibly forgive me?” She has given him no reason to trust her, she knows... but their relationship has deteriorated so much over the past few years. She had tried to apologize for her predecessors’ sins to no avail, and attacking him in Tephra had been in poor taste.
She knows this now, but she fears that even the biggest apology she could muster is not enough, and she is trying so very hard not to crack under the weight of her own sins.
@[litotes]