"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
It’s a vicious, twisting and rooting sort stab in the heart that Etro has not even called to her. Yael would hear it, and Etro knows this. As if everything else wasn’t enough - Mikhael wandering, Zilpah off on her Great Adventure, Akbar and Kitra also gone - but a daughter she has given nothing but love cannot even check in on her mother. She and Vanquish doted on their first born; Etro may have been physically allergic to them, but is she emotionally as well?
Yael is a patient woman, and a busy woman, and a stubborn woman. But she is a woman, who has a very big heart, and her baby girl is breaking it.
Etro doesn’t even know of her father’s death.
Yael has to break it to her eventually.
Now is a good a time as any, she supposes. What is one day more or less? If her daughter will not come to her, then she will go and find her.
Part of her is angry, and for once, she lets that part rule her. Family is the most important thing in the world, and here she is, cast aside as if she had not carried Etro and nurtured Etro and would not kill for Etro. Her cinnamon brown eyes flash (literally) with her frustration as she appears in the middle of the Meadow. With a deep breath and a heavy heart, she calls silently out to her daughter. She is strong, but Yael is older and stronger, and she forces the message through whatever negating field she may unconsciously have.
Etro. Come xere.
It is in her Queenly voice. This is not a request. It is a demand.
Don't make her have to say it again.
and I ran back to that hollow again
the moon was just a sliver back then
There is part of her that knows she should have gone back sooner.
Part of her that knows her mother will be displeased, her father even angry, and like a petulant child, she had avoided it. But there is also another part of her, one that is perhaps more mature, that is angry; part of her that remembers the way her mother and Kingslay had spoken about her as if she wasn't there with air that was thick with tension. The way they had stood stony-eyed on either side of her, and she had felt hopelessly lost between them—and, yet, she knows that too is an excuse.
She was strong enough to handle them disliking one another, old enough to rise above them discussing her like she wasn't there. That wasn’t the reason that she had fled and it wasn’t the reason that she had not returned yet. It was the fear. The fear of the illness spreading through her veins; the terror at what was becoming of her when the very land itself made it feel like her veins were dry and rubbing together.
The fear is the reason she had not returned.
And it is fear she felt, for a moment, when she heard her mother—the disappointment clear in the way her mother’s voice demanded her presence. Lifting her homely head, her mouth pulled into a slight frown and her stomach churned in reaction. But, like a good child, she obeyed, moving with her head dipped down low. When she was a few yards away, she came to a stop, feeling both utter relief at being in her mother’s presence and absolute fear at the memories of illness that it dredged up.
“Hello, mom.”
and I ached for my heart like some tin man
when it came, oh, it beat and it boiled and it rang
Hello, mom, her beautiful (always beautiful in her mother’s eyes) daughter says. As if she had only been gone a day or two at most.
Her heart could explode when Etro finally appears; that iron clad dam she’s built around her heart has suddenly and inexplicably sprung a leak. But unlike the Little Dutch Boy who put his thumb in the dike’s hole and plugged it, she is no plucky little hero. The trickle of emotion quickly rushes, sending cracks spiraling outward, until the whole structure is doomed. Her children have always had the power to wound her the most. They don’t know it, and they never use it… but they do.
Yael spends a moment simply feasting on the sight of her little girl. Drinking her in, parched and dry mouthed and with her breath caught in her throat. All grown up. Then the trickle becomes a vicious torrent and she can no longer hold back the tears from her eyes. Etro could have said anything, really, and Yael would have sobbed to hear her voice. The golden woman inhales loudly, jaw quivering as her chest tightens and tightens and tightens. They do not speak of Van’s death. She just keeps on living and is grateful for the tree and their respect and silence. “Etro…” she finally chokes out, unwilling to force the sickness on her (it must be made of her own volition, she won’t make her baby girl endure that, too) and thus, only takes a hesitant step towards her.
“Etro....” she tries again. “Your fazer…” she tries to continue on. But Yael can say no more, her frail-looking body shaking with a grief that still decimates her after… good lord, how many years? Far too many. How has she lived this long without him? But perhaps their daughter can guess, for what else would make Yael lose her composure in public? She has always been the epitome of Queenly grace, even she she stepped down. She finally displays her mortality, here, before her daughter, in a way she has never done before.
and I ran back to that hollow again
the moon was just a sliver back then
There are few things that would destroy Etro to her core. One is seeing her mother crumble before her—the magician always so regal and composed. The other, oh, the other is the unfinished sentence that hangs between them. Yael does not need to finish before Etro begins to hear a roaring in her ears and feel her knees go weak.
They buckle, and she stumbles forward a step, her muddy brown eyes wild and unseeing, glazed over with tears. No. It wasn’t possible. She couldn’t imagine a world without her father—without the behemoth of a stallion’s shadow chasing the camels and then shrouding her as she raced beneath him on the sand, determined to keep up.
How—how could he be gone?
Without thinking, she staggers to her mother, leaning onto the mare and pressing her face into her golden neck. Tears begin to fall, and soon she is shaking with them, completely naked in her grief. “How?” she manages to choke out, between gasping breaths. “When?” Not that she wants to know the answer—she certainly doesn’t want to envision it—but she has to know. She has to know that it was peaceful, that he didn’t hurt. “I am so sorry, mom,” she gasps, holding her mother close.
“I am so sorry.”
For everything. For the shared grief of the loss of Vanquish—but, perhaps, more for the absence. She had left so suddenly, in such a fit of teenage rebellion, and what she had thought was harmless, she now saw as absentee negligence. She should have been there for her mother. She should have been there to comfort her and help the rest of the family. Instead, she had been fleeing her fears. She’d never forgive herself.
and I ached for my heart like some tin man
when it came, oh, it beat and it boiled and it rang
It is all she has wanted for a long time, to embrace her daughter without fear of forcing the sickness on her. In moments of tragedy like this, all other concerns fly out the window.
Yael’s chest constricts, her ribcage a fragile prison containing a rapidly swelling heart. Even her lungs seem to shrivel and wither, and her breath grow impossibly short even though the act isn’t necessary. “Anozer daughter. She.... burned xim vit dragonfire,” she manages to whisper. The stench of burned flesh again wreaks havoc on her memories, unable to forget his agonized screams and feel his fearful surprise. “T’ere vas nozing left to xeal.”
Nothing left to heal and she what - would he have wanted her to navigate the hall of death to bring his soul back? To make him another body? No. Every year she offered him youth and strength, and every year he refused. Yael watched him age, watched him live a mortal, knowing full well that someday she would have to watch him die. But there would be time to prepare for that, time for her to come to terms that it would be the end. He was supposed to die in her embrace, knowing that he was loved and respected and that she would always keep his name alive. No. Instead he had gone up in flames. And Yael was once again, left alone.
and I ran back to that hollow again
the moon was just a sliver back then
At first, Etro doesn’t understand. Another daughter? Family had done this? She feels as if her very veins are shriveling inside of her, and she feels dizzy from the blood rushing in her head. Not dead—murdered. He had been taken from her. Etro had only felt rage a handful of times in her life, but she felt it now. She felt it flooding through her body; it was a cleansing feeling, everything else being washed away with that one singular emotion. It took everything from her until she could hardly breathe.
All of a sudden, she understood how Kingslay could smell like life taken.
She felt very much like she was capable of doing just that.
“His daughter did this?” she finally manages to say, and she is surprised that the stability of her voice. It does not crack the way it does in her mind. Instead, she feels frighteningly calm. Her vision clears and the anger simmers in her stomach, making the rest of the world slow down to a crawl. “Who?”
She doesn’t know what she would do with the information—has no idea if she is capable of carrying out the violent needs that stretch from her marrow to the tips of her nerves—but she has to know. She has to know the name so that she can etch it in her bones and whisper it at night. She has to know who to direct this fiery fury at so that she does not break from it. She needed a target. She needed to know who to hate.
and I ached for my heart like some tin man
when it came, oh, it beat and it boiled and it rang
The one thing Yael tries to avoid - at any cost, and often at at detriment to herself - is death. Yael is life, the way that water in a Desert is sustenance and in the way that sunshine helps the plants grow. Anger rolls off Etro in black, billowing clouds. Clouds that turn red and pulse back and forth with fury and intent to kill. Yael can feel her start to simmer, rapidly growing hotter, until it seems as if her skin might explode with her rage. Ah, no! Not that, please! The last thing her pacifist nature wants is to set loose an angel of death upon the fire and brimstone that was is Isidore. It isn't because she fears the youngest of Van's children with Lyric; quite the contrary. She us protecting the both of them - Etro and Isidore alike.
"No," her mother says. "No. Not t'at. Eet ees not vhat xe vould haf vanted. Your fazer met xer een guilt and seeking forgeeveness." Forgiveness for abandoning them for her. Forgiveness that he needed. That, Yael can understand. That, she had sanctioned. And besides, what if... what if she can bring him back? What if he were to return, only to find that Yael had turned one of his daughters against the other? And if it spread to include all of Lyric's children versus Yael's? The golden woman could never live with it. She could not make a murderer out of her baby girl.
"I vant to breeng xim back," she says instead. "I t'ink I know xow, now." She has been exploring, and she knows the risks. Yael is not afraid.
She pulls away to look at Etro, nosing at a few strands of her mane. Is it wrong for her to want to do this? Will she hate her for withholding the information? Anger is so… unpredictable. It often lashes out on those who deserve it least.
in the hushing dusk, under a swollen silver moon, I came walking with the wind to watch the cactus bloom
Etro simmers beneath Yael’s persistence, her anger dissipating to leave her with nothing but the sadness—to feel nothing but the weakness in the sorrow. “You’re right,” she breathes, and her voice is small, perhaps quieter than she has ever been before. Because Yael was right. The last thing that Vanquish would want is for Etro to fall into the black, depthless waters of rage—no matter how holy, no matter how right.
So she sighs, closing her eyes and feeling the tears clog her throat.
“What now?” she asks, and her expression is slack with despair, the fight between them forgotten, that faux anger having long bled from her. She did not know if she was brave enough to return home—to risk the illness that had began to creep into her flesh for a trait she did not fully understand. She wasn’t sure what she should do now, but she knew that she would do whatever her mother suggested.
But her mother’s next confession makes her breath catch in her throat, and she swallows quickly, trying to suppress the hope that flares in her stomach. “You do?” she closes her eyes and presses her forehead against her mother’s neck. “Is it dangerous?” Not that danger would necessarily dissuade Etro from wanting her mother to try, but she had to know the risk. “How can I help?”
-- vanquish and yael's forgotten trait-negating princess --
Isn’t that always the question? How many times has she looked up to the night sky and asked Adonai those very same words? Yael could never say whether or not he answers - but life always continues. She’s even fallen for the Magician’s sleep and woke to find herself covered in sand and the kingdom eerily quiet.
So, to Etro’s question: what now?
Now they fight back. What use is magic if she can’t use it the way she wanted to? She didn’t know enough to save Aviva (would she be there, in the halls of the dead with Vanquish?), and she rarely uses the full extent of them. Perhaps it is time to change that. Perhaps she should become a driving force again. Oh, but if she could bring Van back, every moment would be for him. Wars be damned.
She cannot help but laugh, because the truth is that she only thinks she knows what to do and how to do it. Having never actually brought someone back from dead before, the whole thing is very iffy and based purely in theory. “I don’t know, but I xaf to try. Or at least… se xim.” She completely ignores the dangerous query. It probably is. But when Etro asks if she can do anything, Yael knows a way to make just a little safer. “Yes… Be my anchor so ve can find ze vay back.” It isn’t magic, so Etro can’t negate it. Actually calling Yael’s name out loud will do nothing but give her mother a way to locate the real world. “Vill you meet me at ze beach tomorrow?”
She can only imagine Van’s surprise when his baby girl is there to greet him too.
Yael, guardian of the desert
[don't feel like you have to reply - i'm just going to go ahead and post on the Afterlife board next ]
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