12-13-2018, 10:27 PM
She never meant to be gone so long, never thought it would take so long to find the twins, pluck them safely from this world so ruined with plague and riddled with death. But she has seen the seasons change, watched the red leaves drop from their moorings on branches so thin and brittle, leaving them bare as bones beneath. Has felt the temperatures drop until her breath clings to her nose like ghosts in the early dawn each morning. There is even snow now, late-winter clinging to the less temperate places, though she is sure there is no snow in Tephra, none where her youngest has been waiting for her to come collect him again.
It feels strange for him to be so absent from her, strange to have this boy and only love him at a distance, theoretically, because she has had no chance to know him. It strikes an ache in her chest, a wound that always drags her thoughts back to him, back to gray man who had fathered him. A fear that he would come looking and try to take the boy from her - a fear that he should, that her son would be better off without her.
But she is too wicked and too greedy and she will never give him up, even now has chosen to abandon her search for a pair of twins she has grown to suspect are not quite ready to be found. A few days will make little difference to them, but it will be enough to ease the ache in her chest that she would confess of to none.
She crosses the border of the Tephran territory, greeted by a wall of humidity that is so familiar, so thick with memories that she is nearly blown away. She had not realized how deeply she had grown to associate this place, the stink of fire and brimstone, with the man who had been her king, her husband. The man she had watched wither away and leave her, she who could not die. She who would have given anything to join him in the peace (or nothingness) of death.
For a while, she is like a ghost standing there. Unmoving and gazing off at nothing, remembering everything until her heart is so heavy she is not sure she’ll be able to carry it any further. She knows the paths they took when they walked together - knows which will take her to their old den and which will take her to where they swam when the humidity became too much. Knows she wants to revisit these places, knows she will come undone again if she does.
She’s nearly forgotten the purpose of being here at all when suddenly the hair along her spine rises, the skin beneath prickling and pulling and drawing a sharp intensity back to those green eyes that had grown shiny with sorrow. Her head turns quickly to the side, her gaze like a blade. But it is a smile that ghosts across her lips when her eyes find who it was that found her first. “Lupine,” she calls to him, a quiet, affectionate murmur for just the two of them, “come here, my clever boy.”
It feels strange for him to be so absent from her, strange to have this boy and only love him at a distance, theoretically, because she has had no chance to know him. It strikes an ache in her chest, a wound that always drags her thoughts back to him, back to gray man who had fathered him. A fear that he would come looking and try to take the boy from her - a fear that he should, that her son would be better off without her.
But she is too wicked and too greedy and she will never give him up, even now has chosen to abandon her search for a pair of twins she has grown to suspect are not quite ready to be found. A few days will make little difference to them, but it will be enough to ease the ache in her chest that she would confess of to none.
She crosses the border of the Tephran territory, greeted by a wall of humidity that is so familiar, so thick with memories that she is nearly blown away. She had not realized how deeply she had grown to associate this place, the stink of fire and brimstone, with the man who had been her king, her husband. The man she had watched wither away and leave her, she who could not die. She who would have given anything to join him in the peace (or nothingness) of death.
For a while, she is like a ghost standing there. Unmoving and gazing off at nothing, remembering everything until her heart is so heavy she is not sure she’ll be able to carry it any further. She knows the paths they took when they walked together - knows which will take her to their old den and which will take her to where they swam when the humidity became too much. Knows she wants to revisit these places, knows she will come undone again if she does.
She’s nearly forgotten the purpose of being here at all when suddenly the hair along her spine rises, the skin beneath prickling and pulling and drawing a sharp intensity back to those green eyes that had grown shiny with sorrow. Her head turns quickly to the side, her gaze like a blade. But it is a smile that ghosts across her lips when her eyes find who it was that found her first. “Lupine,” she calls to him, a quiet, affectionate murmur for just the two of them, “come here, my clever boy.”