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[Open to Grey and Sons of Mandrake]
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There was snow that morning.
It was no more than a dusting really, a faint sprinkling of fat, crystalline flakes that would melt as soon as they hit the earth of the Foothills. Surely it was much too early for snow, as it was still in the last vestiges of the Orangemoon season; the air that rode ‘twixt the valleys and the hills was chill-laden, surely, and perhaps it was this that had beckoned to the snowfall to come so early now. A silken veil obscured the azure of the sky, ash-grey and foreboding, casting the dawn in a vault of colorless shadow. The sun barely penetrated the cloud barrier; it was a faint morning of snowfall and a persistent, creeping chill that permeated the entirety of the territory.
Circe had been expecting her excitement to wane and die, to be replaced by the same cautious worry the Dauntless had displayed that first, tenderly berserk night together; she had expected to fret about the foal she carried, to ache with fear and apprehension about the thought of her being a mother and raising a child in the hard world she knew so desperately well. None of those things happened; as her stomach rounded out and she felt the stirrings of life gamble about in her womb, a warm glow settled upon the shadowmere’s breast, and for the first time in many moons she felt….happy. She grazed the fields, relieved of her duty to draw blood and crush her enemy’s skulls, and instead she was left to her own devices to feel her heart flutter with adoration and feel her child shift inside of her. The wonder was indescribable; the joy was heartbreaking. She had even come up with a name for her child—“Callisto”. On quiet evenings, when the sun set low and the golden glow pierced through the cold of the dying season, Circe would speak that name—“Callisto”—and the glow would flare into something almost painful, almost stifling, and Circe would smile to herself in hopeless content. It was quite possible that the sorceress had never been so deep in love before these precious moments with her child she had never even met yet.
Hours ago, on the frozen morning of early snow, twinging discomfort and the likes of which Circe had never felt began to wrack her body, pulling the sorceress from sleep; after the initial shock and panic, the shadowmere realized the hour of birth was nigh, and her excitement flared once more. Quietly she extracted herself to a lonesome corner of the territory and settled herself to battle with this new kind of agony—and it was a battle. The shadowmere groaned and snorted and bit her tongue, gnashing her teeth against the onslaught , laying on her side and heaving her body to expel the trapped foal from within. The sorceress battled with tenacity and impatience she had never before experienced—but she wanted to meet her dear Callisto.
Several hours later, as the flakes began their hesitant fall and the morning began to creep into the dim light of life, Circe still lay upon the frozen ground. The snow fell upon her brow and the tip of her horn; upon her barrel and her flank; covering her hooves and threatening to obscure her vision. Circe was sitting up, ever alert and newly free of the pain of birth—but she was numb. Everything was numb. The wind that started to howl in her ears and the light that fought to pierce through the clouds in the sky, the lasting soreness and hurt that lingered in her body—she was numb to it all. Excruciatingly numb. Her mind, the air in her lungs, the light in her eyes….all of it was dead. She spoke once and only once, and even her voice sounded like the croak of a fading corpse.
“Callisto,” she breathed.
For there was her child, her dearest daughter, brought into this world of early snow and faded light. Here was the tiniest body imaginable, cloaked in night and donning the likeness of the man Circe had collaborated with to create this precious little girl. There was the source of Circe’s happiness; here was the light and glow that had filled the shadowmere’s breast and throat, the spring of the hopeless, giddy contentment that followed the Executioner on her quiet days of reflection.
Here was Callisto.
Dead.
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