The Sunspear had retrieved her armor and the rest of her belongings from their hiding place in the oasis. Castor had wanted to wear the skull so she had indulged him and sent him on ahead with his father. Black eyes took a look around the familiar lake, hoping to find something to stir up fond memories, but it was no use. Somehow, with these new eyes everything she saw looked just different enough to break her heart. Megaera still struggled to make sense of Gaucho's passing, but struggled when she half expected to see his flaming wings rising over every rise she looked upon. She hadn't realized just how vital he had been to everything she had loved here. 

She had loved him.

Not with the passion that Ampere had, not with the steady warmth of Sohalia, and not in the way that she loved Einarr, but Meg had loved Gaucho. So much more worthy of the title father was he than the monster she had slain, father and mentor and guide and friend. Her life here in Helovia had all been built upon him and to lose his reassuring presence had shaken everything she had taken for granted. She had always taken confidence in the faith Gaucho had shown in her, and now that was gon, and the Sun's favor with it. It was almost unbearably symbolic that this fall of the Wildfire and the Sunspear had come as Tallsun died away and left it's throne to the moon...to the cold.

Einarr was right, and as much as she had fought it initially, she had given in to his suggestion, they had to leave the Throat. As much love as she still had for sun and shore and sand, something had shifted in such a strange and uncomfortable way that this just wasn't her home anymore. They would take their children and... well, she wasn't sure what they would do, but they couldn't stay here. 

When she head the summons she almost ignored it, perhaps she should have but the gathering has already in her path and so she came upon it eventually and the bile rose in her throat. She had tried not to be angry, tried not to be bitter, but the sight of someone else in her place had a torrid heat burning in the Sunspear's gut. She had though the Sun had had faith in her, but he had replaced her. She had been searching for her missing child and had been demoted and replace apparently before Gaucho's body had cooled. To take the Wildfire from her but the Sun had taken her family in the same stroke. The God's will could not be supplanted in his own domaine but had any of them objected? Had any of them thought her as a ruler in her own right? No...to all of them she had just been Gaucho's second, his lackey, his stooge!

She came upon the meeting halfway through it's current trajectory; soon enough to gather that this mysterious black behemoth Volterra was taking her husbands place just and unceremoniously and Sikeax had taken hers. Not only that, but this stranger was already about to lead an inquisition over a band of outsiders who had made no move to harm them. As protective as Meg had been of the Throat, she had never gone that far. The armor-clad battlemare came to a halt beside Ampere as she spoke out and like the blue sparks that cracked around the Mother of Companions, Meg now had sparks of her own. The buzzed in her very eyes, making them glow red from the slits in her steel helm. "You're mad, Sikeax, if you think to start your reign this way." She took up the thread Apmere had begun and growled it at the new Sultana before sending a scathing glance at Volterra and back. "The Wildfire not gone a season and you bring some stranger here to lead the Throat into fight with NO more justification than YOU feel uncomfortable on your pedestal?! You command 'warriors and spies' but what does a healer know of such things?!" She hadn't intended to burn bridges, but for the love she had for the throat she wouldn't stand for this.

[Mentioned @Ampere @Sikeax & @Volterra]

M E G A E R A

passionately smashin’ every expectation