everything we are, it just went away
with a slide of the tongue and a sour taste
She can’t help but be reminded of her own mother as Solace approaches, a look of concern all over the buckskin’s face. She looks so much like Rhae that she almost can’t look the woman in the eye; it hurts too much. She sees her hesitate to drape a wing over the unicorn’s back and Dawn almost breathes a sigh of relief—if Solace were to touch her now, she would surely crumble into irreparable pieces. She mentions Cress and Dawn looks away, studying the sand beneath her hooves. Her small speech at the meeting is not what she was talking about, and they both know it.
“My mother is a good woman,” she murmurs, thinking fondly of the woman who raised her. Her mother had doted upon her. She would follow her to the Playground’s borders and watch from afar as Dawn met up with Rhaegor and Clayton and played for hours, coming home to regale her mother with stories of the epic adventures she had gone on with her best friend. Oh, the adventures they had gone on, from one end of the Playground to the other! When they outgrew the Playground, they had explored every inch of the common lands and then some, even daring to tiptoe the borders of the kingdoms surrounding them. They had been unstoppable once.
Solace reaches out to brush a piece of her blond forelock away from her eyes, and Dawn sighs as she leans into the brief touch. ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’ the pegasus prompts her. Dawn swallows hard and glances over to the queen quickly, praying that more tears don’t fall. “I... I screwed everything up,” she whispers desperately, voice cracking. “I don’t know how to fix it.”
Too late—the tears well up in her eyes and overflow, swiftly following the tracks down her face. “I pushed him away. Rhaegor. I told him things... things I never should have said.” Things that are true, though. Things that are so true they ripped through your soul when you uttered them aloud. She trembles but doesn’t move away from Solace’s warmth, afraid to lift a hoof. “I love him,” she admits finally, head drooping. “I love him more than the ocean loves the shore; more than I ever thought possible. But I’m just... me. Plain, boring Dawn with nothing special compared to his actual girlfriend. And I lost him because of that. He won’t even look me in the eye. I ruined our friendship. I lost him.”
Realizing that she had just vomited so many words all over the sand between them, she snaps her jaw shut and looks up at Solace, eyes wide. “I-I-I'm sorry,” she stutters, apologizing for what feels like the millionth time. “He’s your son and I would never, ever speak ill of him. I just miss him, more than words can say. He was my very best friend.”
Dawn
oh, it's gonna be a long night