I will find you across every universe - Kavi

[Kavi]

Do you believe you're missin' out?
That everything good is happening somewhere else?

I am, at best, the a forgotten pair of honeyed lips that crack and bleed for old age. My children are grown now, or at least mostly, and off making brilliant names for themselves in a political landscape that no longer begs of me any attention whatsoever. Kagerus may come and whisper her stories to me, but I don't listen when it's about land or kings or queens - well, except one queen. I do listen, when she speaks of Solace - and when I realize that she is as in love with her golden queen as I am with my tawny one, I urge her to speak to Solace's father, to ask for his blessing - for I gave mine long ago, but his must be given, too.

Khaedrik, however... He has been elusive. He is his mother's child, and what I know of him, I hear through her. Ahh, her... I smile to remember her (though in truth we needn't remember each other save for a glance to our side), wondering where she has gone off to this windy autumn day. The sweet grass of this small forest keeps me busy while I think upon her, and upon our family too - the only important things in my life anymore, the only ones tethering me to existence at all.

When her call comes to me, I forget my meal and am running on old bones born anew to meet her, a light glimmering in my eyes that she had placed there with the simplicity of her presence. As my eyes take her in, I notice the age that has settled on her shoulders, and wonder at how I must look in comparison; but our bodies are nothing more than harbingers for our wandering, aching souls, and in each other's we have found a place to rest and lick our wounds. She is my solace, and in her, I find no fault - not even for the wounds, nor for the way her skin turns grey.

"Darling," I murmur into the warmth of her tangled mane, breathing in her scent as if it alone is what keeps me from falling where I stand. She smells like a life well lived and the serenity of a moonlit garden, plentiful in well tended shadows and pure despite the inky darkness. To pluck her flowers I would never dare, but instead to bring my garden alongside hers so that we may admire that handiness of our work for the rest of eternity, a smiling moon beaming its approval down upon us until the end of time: this is how I would have it. And in truth, this is how it is - how it shall always be.

"I missed you too."

But in the next phrase she pulls away, frowning - but even this show of somberness does not sour my mood, for I know of that which she shall speak. I reach for her, gently kissing her eyes until the crease in her brow lessens, and then disappears altogether. "I know, love, but you needn't worry. Not for that, anyhow."

I do my own kind of pulling away now, with a pensive look, not frowning, but not smiling, either. "Sweetheart, we are grandparents." My words come as if they are a prayer, reverent of them, but also slightly fearful. I watch for her reaction, hoping that it might guide my own. "Kagerus survived childbirth - she had a son, named Abysm... But his coming about was unnatural, and I'm afraid that she has all but abandoned him." I'll go see him every day until he is weaned, father, but I cannot be a mother to something I did not birth, I can't, I'm not strong enough, please daddy don't be angry, and I hadn't been, but now, in the presence of one whose judgement I do not fear, I allow the emotions I suppressed before Kagerus to come through.

"But of Khaedrik, too, I am worried - our children's demons are at each others throats, and I feel utterly helpless..."

KAVI

Kagerou x Rhaego

@[Insignificance] HI THIS IS THREE MONTHS LATE AND I SCREWED WITH THE CHRONOLOGY BUT I SAW THAT YOU'RE BACK AND GOT SO EXCITED BYE