[mature] here we are in the heart of the darkness; Briseis

[Briseis]

little do you know how I'm breaking while you fall asleep,
little do you know I'm still haunted by the memories,
little do you know I'm trying to pick myself up piece by piece

She remembers that day in the meadow, when it had felt like the entire earth had split and created a rift between them. There had been no way to know that they were both jumping to conclusions, that their own imaginations were tearing apart something that should have been the beginning of something perfect and eternal. She still didn’t realize how confusing her words had been to him, without any context to explain what she had meant. And now, looking at him and his children, she can only assume that he had left because there was someone else.

Perhaps someday she would learn to not make assumptions.

Haunt invites Misfit to play, but she can see the way her son looks up at her, a little reluctant to leave her side. With her black muzzle she reaches down to pull him close for a moment, murmuring into the soft fur near his ear, ”You should go play. Just don’t go far.” She does her best to keep her voice light, knowing that if she let even a trace of apprehension creep through that he wouldn’t go. Even though she didn’t really want him to go, she knew it wasn’t fair to keep him nearly chained to her side, and that he needed interaction with others his own age. With a gentle nudge and an encouraging smile from her end, he finally follows Haunt, and the pair are soon joined by the filly.

She can feel the heavy weight of the tension that lingers between her and Ether, especially with three of the children gone, and the other now curled to the ground. When she looks at the little colt, clearly weaker than his siblings, it makes her heart clench, and for a moment she forgets everything else when she asks Ether with the concern evident in her voice, ”Is he okay?” The motherly part of her wants to reach over and touch him, but she refrains; he’s not her child, after all, and perhaps whoever Ether was with didn’t want some stranger hovering over her son.

He asks her what it had been that she had wanted to explain, and she can already feel herself inwardly withdrawing. She had thought that by finally telling Leilan that perhaps it would be easier a second time, but now, with those haunting golden eyes within her line of sight, the very thought of it was choking her.

”The mistake that I had made,” She begins, her voice painfully soft, as though if she were to whisper it that it would somehow be less humiliating. ”Was being alone in the forest and attracting the wrong attention.” He isn’t looking at her, but she is watching him, her eyes sweeping across the familiar lines and angles of his face; that same face she had dreamed about before her nightmares chased it away. ”Misfit doesn’t know who his father is, and I hope he never finds out how he came to be.” Her gaze drifts back to her blue-pointed son, the tears once again stinging her eyes and the back of her throat, ”It’s not his fault his mother is a fool and his father is a monster.”

When she looks back at Ether, there is something so entirely empty and detached in her stare, almost looking through him and not at him, even though every word she utters is of complete sincerity, ”I would choose you, every single time, if given the choice.” Even though her voice is still quiet, even though the words are laced with an almost intangible anguish, they seem to ring hollow when they leave her lips, dropping like shards of glass from her mouth, ”Tunnel didn’t give me a choice that night. And I hope every day that Misfit is nothing like him.”

BRISEIS

underneath it all I'm held captive by the hole inside,
I've been holding back for the fear that you might change your mind