I was in the darkness, so darkness I became;
She rushes forward when the girl collapses, a tender instinct that will surprise her, later, when she looks back on this. Fresh blood joins the scent of old, and that too causes a strange mix of emotions in Craft. The last time she recalls blood, she was dying.
(She accepts this, now – that she died. That she was killed by her impossible son.)
(She still doesn’t know why she is no longer dead.)
But that memory should not matter, because Craft is well, now, and the girl clearly is not. Craft touches her, gently, tries to push healing into her. She knows her powers have changed, since returning, but she wields it poorly still. Could she heal her? She has granted gifts to the children born here – small things, but still – and she thinks of that now, tries to reshape it into closed wounds, seamless skin.
“I’m sorry,” she says to the girl, and she is – sorry this happened. She listens to the girl’s next statement - I can’t seem to die - and something wells within her, a strange and terrible laugh that she bites her lip to keep caged.
I know how to die, she thinks, bitter, but not how to stay dead.
She sees her, then.
Their eyes meet and now it’s Craft whose knees are buckling, albeit from shock and not pain, because she knows those eyes, doesn’t she? Those goddamn eyes.
(Is this enough, mother? Is this enough?)
“Are you his?” she asks, her tone sharper now. She is reeling still, it takes a moment before she adds, “are you Covet’s daughter?”
Surely he’s not alive. Surely not.
She does not think about her son. Last time she saw him, he was dying, too.
Craft
@[Mazikeen]