I almost fell in love with the place. I almost fell in love with the valleys and the mountains that lined it and the gleam of a spring over yonder there in the shade and the trees and the caves that I didn’t even know about the idea would have been ill as fuck if someone had told me about it. I would have fallen in love, too, what with the bitchin sentinel behind me and the crispness of the air and the aurora I didn’t even know about at that point but regularly ribbons up in the sky in this place, nothing but light and agonizing somethings that I couldn’t stand.

I almost fell in love.

Almost.

*”Roskuld."*

But everything just dropped.

My eyes focused on someone pale and graceful winding their way toward me, welcoming me to this place, and who could it be but my own Ma?

My Ma who I’d been so afraid of losing.

The Ma I hadn’t spoken to, who hadn’t spoken with me in the midst of all these murders.

Suddenly here she was, in my face--living in a place that I’d just now found, welcoming me in these halls after having lost myself in a blizzard and a frozen desert. Here she was, residing in the land of my Pa, my Pa’s place, his domain.

A place she never once told me about.

I…I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to feel. I didn’t know what I was feeling, because I was feeling something, but it was so jumbled. Maybe it was the shock of seeing her that was making my mouth drop, my eyes widen, my voice die in my throat; maybe it was because of the fact that what I was feeling wasn’t happiness at the unexpected sight of my Ma that made my reaction so empty, so trippy and confusing that I couldn’t get a handle on it.

I was flailing inside, even though I stood frozen, staring at Ma like she was a ghost, a poltergeist trying to trick me into doing some dumb shit. It wasn’t until her eyes left me—to look behind me, to look at Shapes, and I saw something stirring there behind her gaze, something I didn’t understand but hated to see anyway--that something finally broke through the constipation in my head and heart.

And it turned out to anger.

“Well FUCK ME,” I boomed, my voice breaking through the brittle ice of my Ma’s presence, the heavy snowdrift that was Shapes behind me, “Didn’t expect to see you here, Ma,” I was saying too loudly, my voice harsh and mocking, splintered with catastrophic things that were pouring out of me that I couldn’t control, that were slicing my cheeks as they left my throat, “What a pleasant fucking surprise!!”

I jerked my head away from her, to pace a few steps to my right; then I jerked left again, my tiny tail lashing and my breath furiously huffing through my nose and I couldn’t explain the violent heat rising inside me, suffocating me, drowning me, a flashflood from nowhere, but it was coming out in heaps and it makes my teeth ache just thinking about it and it makes my heart hurt to remember how I acted but there was a demon riding my back and it was—

--hurt.

“So what brings you here, Ma?” I said suddenly, stopping in my tracks to peer at her with a sharp eye and an even sharper brow, “When’d you decide to come here, Ma, to Pa’s herd?” I grit my teeth and I swear the fire rose so high up I could almost taste it in the back of my throat (or maybe it was just bile), “Pa’s herd, huh? Funny. Never heard of this place. Must be pretty cool to come here. Would have been nice to know. ” Irony was dripping from my mouth like leaking venom. “Would've been pretty bitchin’ to visit.”

The crust of my words were starting to flake, to the real hurt behind them that raged like fury inside as a shield; My Pa’s herd that I never knew about. My Pa’s herd that she had never told me of, a connection to a whole half of me tucked deeply into the mountains. All I had known about it was that it was a place where unicorns had paid for our services, but I was too young to care about that particular politics; never before had she told me that my Pa (my Pa! MY PA--) had had a whole land dedicated to him and his honor—

--but I also hadn't known I had a Pa until he had come to find me.

Circles, circles, going back in circles. I forgot about Shapes in that moment, consumed with this thing that Ma had unleashed by nothing but her presence. This thing that had been festering since I had told her I had finally met my Pa—and her eyes had gone cold.



@[Torleik]
@[Ophelia]



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