[private] Through thick and thin

[leuce]

The child hugs her wings tight against her sides, even as the faeries try to coax her out. She keeps her nose touched to the crook of her knee, her eyes squeezed tightly shut.

Her mother had hardly touched her in the hours after her birth. Her mother had given her absolutely no indication that she’d wanted the child and there had been precious little warmth in the way she’d received her, but the child believes she’ll come back. Aches for her to come back.

The faeries flit and tug at the scruff of her mane but she stubbornly refuses to lift her head, open her eyes, accept her situation for what it is. Her mother is gone and she is not coming back. Her mother had never wanted her in the first place. 

This voice is different, realer somehow than the quiet noises the faeries made as they’d tried to convince her to open her eyes. She clamps her wings even tighter against her side, hesitating before cracking open one eye, catching a hazy glimpse of the stallion’s legs. Her breath hitches and she closes the eye up again, swallowing the fear that swells in her throat before she tries to summon the courage required to open both eyes and lift her head.

He had not asked nicely. In fact, he had not asked at all. She draws in a staggered breath as the sun slips over the edge of the horizon and the darkness begins to deepen. Still, she reflects the sunset for what it had been.

Her mother had not given her a name, but she does not know how to admit that, so she says, “Leuce.” Something she had heard a faerie whisper as it had tugged at an apple blossom stuck in the tuft of her forelock. 

“Are you here to take me back to my mother?” she asks, her throat tight with longing.

i feel the sun coming up, rising from the east
and i see the empire falling to her knees
and i lost the line between her and me

Leuce