03-23-2016, 01:24 PM
And through the branches twinkling fireflies trace their mimic constellations --
War is not clean or easy.
She has known war only as a single, sudden, tidal surge in a lifetime of calm. She has spent her life thinking and observing and mothering. She has not spent her life fighting or defending. This had been new and it had been pitiless. She had suggested that if they were breached, it might be lost. They hadn’t lost, not in the aggregate, but it had felt like a massive blow to her.
Prague’s fortifications had been good – nothing is perfect. He had gotten through, him and his hellhound – affronts to nature, and for the first time, she had scented her own close peril.
War is a quagmire. Many things get stuck in the suck of mud and ruin and never get returned – war changes everything. It had taken her some time to realize she had probably failed, but by then her daughter and Fiero were by her side and hell had taken it’s playthings back. By then, she was angry enough not to care.
Anger has a queer taste. It is new to her – bitter and powerful – it had scared her. She had first tried to bargain with it, to find the deals she had to make inside herself to ward it off. She wasn’t even sure who she was angry with, exactly...
Longear had angered her, but in hindsight, what she had done had been for the best.
That demon and his beast had angered her.
Lupei and his fire had angered her.
(The Mother had angered her, but that frightens her more than anything, so she pushes it down deep.)
Everyone who had failed to quell the situation before it became a conflagration… they angered her most of all.
Until anger gave way to somberness.
She had come out unscathed but her dreams have been fits and starts since. She knew she had let something slip through the cracks. She had done a count and then a second time through there had been one less. (Larken had died. Vineine did not know that yet. In truth, she hadn’t tried overly much to find out. She is not proud of the ignorance she has shielded herself with.)
Sadness is a much duller thing than anger. Weighty, drawn-faced and sober she nods back at Lagertha. The metal Queen looks even more tired than she imagines herself to look, but then, heavy must be the weight of power and responsibility. Her ears twitch in Naga’s direction but the arrival of Longear and Fang to her side draws her attention. She touches the girl’s (almost a woman) shoulder – noses Fang gently – and side-by-side they wait quietly for the congregation to form and for what comes next.