[private] Desolation comes upon the sky // Brennen/Blue

[Scorch]

WATCH THE FLAMES CLIMB HIGH INTO THE NIGHT

He must have known (for don't all the magicians know?) that she came to their thicket. (Their thicket - it felt revolting to think, an admittance to the unfaithful intimacy they'd shared). In the peripheral haze of her consciousness during labour, she smells him nearby - watching from a distance as an ancient stallion would as she underwent the grievous pains of birth. They were not particularly bad though, no different from any of the other time's she'd brought forth life into this world: but for all the times that she had mourned the loss of her fertility, she was reminded now why it had also been a blessing.

Not because of the pain, necessarily - but something about motherhood, and about magic, brought out Scorch's manic side.

As the baby stretched (cleared now of debris, an automatic response to the stimulus of a newborn by her side), Brennen approached, materializing from the depths of the tropical woods to greet his daughter in both word and touch. Scorch watched as if from behind a pane of glass, eyes glazed and almost unseeing; but her lover (her paramour, illicit, illegal) turned to her next, commenting on the beauty of their daughter.

Weren't they all beautiful, children?
Especially the ones tampered on by magicians?
(She'd nearly denounced Wrynn on the day of her birth, had nearly chosen one twin over the other as her true mother had in decades past on the turf of a kingdom she did not rule or even belong to - and in a way, she could repeat history, here. She could have. Could have switched Blue for Qaen or Maertin in fatigue after Galilee's birth. But it would never have worked, not with Brennen's magic piercing through each thin veil that made up the known universe: and besides, she was not Katriel's daughter, and she never had been. Katriel gave up that right - threw it away, scorned it - the day of Scorch's birth. She would never do the same to any child of her own - magically tampered with or not).

"Well I couldn't have named her Red," she replied at last, utterly incoherent and offering a foolish, pained smile, as if the joke was supposed to make her laugh but instead made her want to cry.

The girl stood then, and Scorch lowered her head to offer the usual encouragements when needed; her dragon eyes flashed a calming yellow and then an enthusiastic pink once Blue achieved her goal. Thankful, the girl moved forthwith to that which she sought, and with just a nudge on her scrawny bottom, she found herself securely latched beneath Scorch's hairless belly.

She returned her gaze to Brennen, seeming somewhat more in tune with the goings on around them, but still not quite conveying a complete soundness of mind. She spoke low, such that their suckling daughter would not hear.

"This was never supposed to happen."

A pause, and then an ache in her heart as she knew more profoundly and intimately than she knew anything else that she needed Blue, that this last daughter existed with purpose.

"But I love her, Brennen. Unspeakably so.

How.. How do we go forward from here?"

Scorch

Once Khaleesi of the Amazon Jungle