It is easy enough to slip away when she has no one to notice she’s gone, no one to object to her absence. Only her children and the quiet lingering dark of her older brother. She thinks Merry is who worries most out of the four of them, always so quiet and with such shadows in those beautiful sky-blue eyes of his. But he is kind to agree to watch the twins, to watch Dustov who is pure trouble and endless energy. Dark is so much softer, would be happy to curl up across her older brother and let him fuss over her. So much easier than her wild twin. She trusts that between them, though, Illum and Merry will have no issue.
But she needs to get away from things, even if only for a little while. To throw herself into a purpose if only to ease the brokenness inside her soul, the rot that eats away at the meat of a wounded heart. If in the process she can help find a cure to heal the world from the plague, make it safer again for her children, for those she loves so deeply, then all the better.
The fairy who sent them on their way still lingers in her mind as she makes the journey to the Pampas. She is nothing like what Illum had described from his winterland quest, not nearly so harsh as the fae who had guided them to such a frozen, dangerous world. This fairy seemed very much the opposite, soft and beautiful, ethereal. There had been flowers woven in through her hair and a warm radiance in her eyes that reminded Luster of sunshine.
The difference, the extremeness of it, it made her wary.
But she is not left long to wonder and worry, because all too soon the Pampas unfurl around her like an endless meadow of soft, summer colors. The green of grass all interspersed with golden stalks, the bright heads of flowers bobbing sleepily in a soft breeze.
She sighs, wanders slowly into the flowers with such a sudden, inexplicable peace in her heart that she nearly forgets why she’s even come. Her dark eyes blink, her nose sweeping out to touch the nearest flower with a sense of sluggish content that makes something deep inside her absolutely revolt against the wrongness of it. She knows she has no reason to feel this way, so calm, so sedate, knows that even as her eyes grow heavy and her legs bend beneath her, that something must be wrong. Pain, deep rooted and jagged in her chest, has been her closest companion for so long now. Not this, not this hazy peace.
But she settles to the ground with a long, whuffling sigh, feeling her eyes close even before her cheek settles against the ground. There is a second, one single moment stretched out into impossible years where all she knows is the dark behind her eyelids and the echo of her heartbeat, and then there is nothing at all. Only sleep.
