show me how defenseless you really are; Harmonia

[Harmonia]

She is no longer grossly pregnant, feeling the weight of her sniveling child on her womb any longer. The pains of pregnancy without magic were almost too much to bear - she tried death, it wouldn't take her. It seemed her immortality at least stuck around and dragged her back into this hell hole called Beqanna. It ended, though, like all things - good or bad.

At first she planned to leave it. Anywhere, anyplace. It was a whim, like things mostly were, with the Star God. But when she came, a great little thing, she was scaled. Harmonia knew what Beqanna did from time to time, melding genetics to create something great. Her mother was traitless, her father a magician and she? A magician, as was her twin - long dead now.

What of this foal, then?

She does not give birth in Pangea because she planned to leave the thing behind and not let it know where she was. Instead she keeps it, tends to it. She doesn't feel a motherly glow (that's not in her nature) but she does find hope that it might be the child she was hoping for. Covet came close, but in the end he was weak. He loved. He did many a thing she no longer supported. Perhaps this - Ajatar, the scaled girl - would rise up.
Little did she know.

So she heads home but falters in the forest, something lurks that she knows well. She doesn't have to see his face or recognize his scent. Magicians know a lot, and families? Well, they're hard to forget, even if you never met them.

"Father," she says to the old thing. Ajatar stands near her mother, quiet, eyeing the great beast with childish curiosity. She doesn't dare take a step forward until instructed, despite the longing in her bones to come closer.

HARMONIA

the pied piper