The jovial sound of her son at play filled her with a warmth she hadn’t felt since her return to Beqanna. The gentle patter of his hooves brought a smile to her face as she imagined her beautiful blue boy as he galivanted throughout patches of roughened sea grass. At the sound of Leilan’s approach, however, silence overtakes his game. Still quite young, Vi had noticed that her son was not particularly fond of unfamiliar faces. She imagined that the hulking figure of her brother as he strode towards them could be a point of worry for her son. His voice was laced with curiosity as jumped up to plant a reassuring kiss upon his mother’s cheek.
“My brother,” she answered his question as simply as she could. “He will not harm you, my child.”
Leilan’s scent grew stronger until the sound of his hoof-falls stopped directly before them. Vi could barely discern the shape of his shadow in the lowering light of the afternoon. The curves of his face shot up from the depths of her memory and she remembered his boyish grin as it had once been. For a moment it felt as though they were back in the fold of the Jungle once more, with her so desperately trying to fill the void her loneliness left her. If felt odd to be reunited with him so many years after their final and devastating goodbye. Now she stood before him as the elder – even despite the order or their births.
As he speaks, his tone still clings to the carefree verbiage of his youth. For a moment she imagines his smile and she returns the expression loosely upon her face. It was difficult to forget that he had left her, just as they all had in turn. Her smile faltered as the heaviness of her past, known and unknown, weighed down upon her. It felt like a cruel twist of fate that she would leave and return aged while the markings of time remained lost upon her older brother’s features.
Vi does not speak as Leilan turns his attention to little Drustan. The spitfire of a colt had been the best possible gift to come out of so many lost years. Although she did not remember his conception, she imagined that she had been reunited with her beloved Astray in the beyond. The colt resembled his older sister so completely, it was easy to forget the ways that they were different. When Reshi had entered the world she had laid eyes upon the beauty of her daughter, something that she would never be able to do with Drustan.
“Brother,” Vi chuckled as she forced erself back into her current reality. “Don’t overwhelm the child. Even I have not yet met all of our siblings.”
To no fault of your own.
Her upbringing had not resulted in the easiest of childhoods, but she found it difficult to place blame upon the shoulder of her parents. They’d faced challenges of their own and Vi had merely been a victim of their circumstances.
VI
lights will guide you home
@[Drustan] @[Leilan]