Wallace
He came back to her side, urged her on gently. Maybe she couldn’t have done it without him hovering there, she wasn’t sure. Deep down, she felt perhaps she had something to prove to him. That perhaps she should at least appear to be something more than she felt, insignificant and damaged. Maybe that was why she didn’t just give up. Or maybe her body didn’t give her a choice. Sometimes she didn’t get choices in what happened to her.
Wallace, dove. You did an amazing job. Are you in pain?
She was. Her body and her spirit. Though her back was to him as she lay there, she didn’t have to give him an answer before he shared his medicine again. She found that it dulled that other hurt too, the one that may never heal, and she sighed faintly into the warmth that came with it. Tears tracked lazy paths down her cheek as she stared blankly into the darkness, but she no longer shuddered with quiet sobs.
What will you name them? he asked. It pulled her mind out of the past and back to him, back to them, and she felt a pang of guilt. Because she hadn’t even thought of naming them. Or maybe even of keeping them. She was already a terrible mother. She tried to draw a mask over that self-disappointment as she forced herself to sit up, looking over each of them briefly with dull, dead eyes. Her eyes settled on the colt with wings of an angel, handsome little thing even if he looked like the devil. Her voice was quiet and hollow when she spoke.
Kharon. The ferryman. He would guide her to the afterlife.
She looked away as she felt another wave of shame at her dark thoughts. That she’d ever think such self-deprecating things only made her feel worse. She’d never done that before, had always been so very fierce -sometimes too fierce, had never thought so little of herself. Instead of making her stronger, it only made her hate herself more. Perhaps she shouldn’t name them after all.
Her eyes flicked to the girl. She didn’t look like her mother; she’d be painfully beautiful. Then she looked back at the man, very briefly, before she dropped her gaze and mumbled, Perhaps you should name her. She dropped her nose to the ground, idly stirring the earthen floor as she avoided the disgust that must be in his eyes. Something pretty, she whispered.
