"Hm, if only you knew how proud," I reply to Hotaru’s genuine complement with a much darker tone; the last I’d seen of my dam, over a year ago, on the borders of a tall forest filled with fireflies, I’d been told I had to be as much. Of course, any who knew me, also knew I had returned to Helovia and done exactly the opposite. I was where I was now because it was my path, which I had earned on my terms.

Fuck her, and her games, I think, with backward tilted ears, realizing that I’ve suddenly grown rigid in the throes of my dark thoughts, pulling myself out of them to listen to Hotaru and Gwyn, Kiada and Rexanna, and, of course, Thranduil.

What I knew that the Laurelin certainly knew was such: Kisamoa had risen from the sea, and he probably shouldn’t pretend to be Shida ever again. I had not seen him in the Marsh, during the confrontation (as I had only briefly been there), nor did I recall Hotaru’s presence – it was as much for her, Kiada, and Rexanna to know, as it was his greedy need for everything to be about him, and it was better to include everything I knew, and was willing to share. Getting it all out of the way, without having to dwell on it, seemed the most logical course. Besides, I didn’t like discussing the current matters in front of Gwyn, to begin with. It was all too dark and scary for little ears that, as far as I was concerned, were meant to hear only stories about cheerful, happy endings.

We didn’t know the end yet. It’s what made it scary. It’s what also made it so imperative that these two individuals, in particular, were made fully aware of what was going on, being among those in Helovia who had seen many disasters, and dealt with them each in turn. As I had told each of the herd lands that had arrived at our doorstep, the time for putting barriers between ourselves had passed, at least until Kaos had been dealt with. Though I was not always honest, I did mean that; even though Gwyn had only been an imaginary thing, still within Glacia, at the time, I had other priorities, now.

And, I really did want to do what was best for everyone. Even if it meant putting aside the way I felt about others to include them in the bigger picture; even if it was hard, and I almost always failed to do so. The magical rock that the Time God had given me had forced me to truly be what other people wanted me to be, for the while they held it. I had first thought that it was a punishment, a means to inflict that powerlessness upon me as I had to others…

But it had been full of more lessons than that. Lessons that I was slowly absorbing, still the same person I’ve always been, more or less; I spend too much time thinking about myself, in contexts of selfish wants and whims, and too little seeking the meaning of all the small parts and pieces that have coalesced to the now. Yet, for all that I had to still see, I had been forced to accept that others felt empty, too, and that others saw me as many things: an object, a friend, or an enemy, but none of them seemed to see me for who I truly was.

Maybe that meant that I didn’t see others for who they were, either.

Kiada’s gasp at the mention of the death of the long-time Lord and my father draws my eyes, a flickering glance tossed to the emotional reaction, and Hotaru’s apology draws a more slowly acquired look, after I have managed to seal away the holes in my heart behind a hard, golden wall. They are something to focus on other than the snakes and shadows roiling about inside my chest; the witnessing of someone else’s pain, fresh and wounding, rather than my own, which has grown fetid inside my chest. How is Erebos? She asks, and I narrow my eyes at her, despite my want to remain impassively stone, and to not let my feelings slip out so easily; how is he? What about me? I jealously think, before the bite of how selfish a thought that is resounds after, in Duir’s mental hymn.

"Sullen, and removed," I answer, because it’s the truth; as to how he is, I don’t talk to people about their feelings unless I have to, mostly because it quickly gets complicated, and I manage to wound them further. Especially his. "He spends what time he is not serving the herd or training at the Lord’s Tomb, it seems."

Looking next to Hotaru, I nod, genuinely grateful for her sympathy. So few had known my sire well enough to understand what a loss he was to this world, but Hotaru… Hotaru knew.

"Thank you," I say, softly, the fringes of my quickly erected emotional barriers curling beneath the weight that presses behind those two words. Like her, we are hidden creatures; she taught to be as she is by my mother, belatedly evolving from ensnared moth into carefully poised spider, and myself… I had been created. An unnatural amalgamation of a warrior’s honor and a serpent’s deceit, ill composed, and wavering.

That I am not made to hide behind guises and masks is evident by how easily my amusement can be drawn out by sentiment and memory. When Thranduil congratulates me as the conversation turns more towards my newest achievement, I mirror the smile, and snort humorously. Remembering that conversation with some measure of embarrassment, because, Gods, I was a whining shit back then (still are, Duir remarks, casually), I tilt my head.

"It’s not the worst thing to pretend to be I guess," I lend him with a smirk, "it was meant as an insult by the woman who first spat it at me. I find it more truthful than anything else I’ve been called by my herd-mates before… and I guess part of me hopes it pisses her off, too."

I get the feeling Thranduil understands that rush more than most I’ve met.

Raeden is brought up, and my ears fall back slightly, my smile faltering at the thought of that horrible wench. How could Hotaru share blood with her? Aside from the prettiness, I found little of comparison between the bitch in the mist, and the rosy woman of my youth.

"Still a complete bi…er, terror," I correct myself, remembering Gwyn is with me at the last moment, but wanting to share with Hotaru that, while her sister was certainly not my favorite person, Hotaru just might be one of hers, "she asked after you in the rise of the season, when she and Rexanna came to the Basin among their comrades. I… uh, well I told her I didn’t know where you had gone."

Not so nicely, of course, but I’m also entirely wary of women. While it has been men who’ve nearly killed me, for the most part, its only women who have attacked me for seemingly no fucking reason at all.

When the conversation quickly turns to the real reason this forest is here, and why anyone lingers, however, it quickly becomes evident that I’m on the losing end. A frown slowly slips over my countenance, Duir looks up with curious wonder at the strange darkness which suddenly blooms inside my heart, and I find myself remembering my father’s back, as he walked out of the Basin, towards the mists.

Were they all this way? I wonder, of the men and women who I had once thought would be a unit, together, forever, only to grow older, and discover that of them all – mother, father, Psyche, Mauja, d’Artagnan, Deimos, Deodat, Sialia - only one was truly anything at all like who he’d seemed to be all along.

And he was dead now.

Hell frozen over is lovely any time of year, says Thranduil, and the pensive hesitation that had bound back my usual emotional eruptions is suddenly forfeited, ears falling back, and golden eyes narrowing contemptuously. Hell? Even Hotaru’s quickly following, positively intoned statements don’t make amends for that blatant insult to my homeland that had invited him in (despite the hesitations of many), and that had once given him a fucking crown.

"Aye, and it is why we must wear such thick cloaks, to keep the petty winds from dampening our spirit, and the ice from treacherous effacements from laying our skin open," I declare with contempt of his attitude, suddenly recalling why it was I disliked the gold, aside from his (former, current?) allegiances to the biggest bitch in all of Loorien; he was arrogant, and took for granted the cost and weight of casually tossed words, and what others could take them to mean. I was still here, under this ruse of regalia and Lordliness, because it was easier to get everything to just fuck off if I played the part they all demanded of me. He could learn that the hard way, I guess, if he so insisted.

"Your welcome, Hotaru, and don’t worry for my Gwyn. We are made strong in the north, as you know," I tell the rosy Valkyrie with a smile that is still hard with my hostility towards her mate, severing my stare at Thranduil to look to her as I turn to leave, with a soft touch to Gwyn’s shoulder in the motion. Unwilling to loathe Hotaru for her contemptuous taste in fuck buddies, I also look to Kiada and Rexanna with individual nods of farewell as I say their names. Duir, in his hurry, simply bleats a mournful farewell to Marembo and Haldir, before scampering after Gwyn and I as we progress out of the clearing. "It was good to see you all again. Come, Gwyn-a, it is time to go home."

I nod while looking at Hotaru’s emerald pools, affirming that I will tell Tiamat that I had seen these two, before I turn to leave, and steadily walk out into the surrounding wood, towards the north. Outwardly, I seem calm, a father cheerfully walking with his beautiful daughter, but, inside, a storm brews, per always.

"I’m sure you will see miss Hotaru at our ever frigid Gates of Hell soon," I say as we part, looking down to my daughter, audibly continuing my words as I touch the soft down of her mane betwixt her perfect ears. I use that quiet, peaceful gesture to reaffix my metaphorical, slipping mantle about my tired shoulders: becoming the father, the Lord, the man I am supposed to be, according to everyone else. There is no room left in my life for my wants anymore, not really… and what had Tiamat said? To be a good man, you had to try? "Some might find them closed or inhospitable, of course, but she was born in the north, just like you. Maybe she’ll have her foals with her next time…"

[ OOC: so remember that time we wrote a novel together guys LOL ]