M E G A E R A
"We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won't do harm - yes, choose a place where you won't do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine." -- E.M. Forster


Ampere didn’t understand, and amidst the doubt and the grief it stabbed at Meg to think that more than facing this decision she would have to articulate that she was leaving the Dragon’s Throat. She hesitated, wondering how she could say those words, how she could seal that final pact and take her leave but a voice interrupted. Cera, perhaps the one person who could make this even harder, said one flat sentence that had her quaking. Her dark eyes turned to find his and it tore at her inside to see that his face seemed just and hollow as his voice. "I… I must—" she started to offer some explanation, her own sadness ebbing as the need arose to sooth his, but he didn’t wait for her to speak. He took into his care the hopes she held that she still had friends here (that they would want her even if the Sun did not) and he tore them to shreds.

"Are you nothing without Gaucho? Is this not your family without your rank?"

It was everything she had feared; the perfect words to surgically slice her into ribbons and leave her flayed pieces out to sizzle and burn in the sun. Could she deny that there was even the smallest thread of truth to that? She had been embittered to think that the citizens of Dragon’s Throat would think those things and also torturously afraid that somewhere in her mind she thought those things of herself. Megaera couldn’t speak, not when her sweet gentle Cera had punched her so very hard in the gut. She could only gape at him, beseeching and horrified, shaking her head "no" because only he could punch air back into her winded lungs now.

"I can't believe you,"

Another kick in the ribs. Cera didn’t believe in her. The Sun God didn’t believe in her. Right at this moment Megaera didn’t believe in herself either. When had she become so weak that words could hurt so much. What would she give to go back four years to when she had first entered Helovia when no one had the power to hurt her like this? As a child she’d endured beating after beating and none had hurt quite like this. What had happened to them? What chords between them had been severed when she wasn't looking? Since the moment that had both stoop above Gaucho in defiance of the Gods, she had thought the bond they had made was unbreakable...but the lately they had only ever been at odds...and allways because Cera had found her lacking. "I hope you find whatever you're looking for,"He spat the words with a vitriol she would never have thought him capable of. 

Looking for... Looking for? He said that like he didn't know. Yes, leaving she was leaving the Throat because everything now everything in it had been painted with regret, everything in it screamed at her that she had failed: as a Sultana, as a mother, as a friend. But leaving the Throat also meant looking for her daughter. Had no one else noticed that Asavvi had gone? Had no one taken a moment to question her absence before condemning her for it?! Megaera's desperate mind seized on that notion like it was the last drop of water in this desert. She seized onto that because it allowed her to be angry.

As her friend Cera turned his back on her, Meg's bewildered and broken expression darkened and she positively seethed. As Ampere's voice broke through with a firm command, Meg shot her a angry stare that glinted with nothing short of mutiny. How dare Ampere tell her she couldn't go? The indignity was too much and Meg had no words fit for the blue in that moment. Instead she turned back to hurl words at Cera's retreating form. "ASAVVI IS GONE!" She almost choked on the words but they tore through her ragged throat like wildfire. "Einarr and I have searched for weeks! If that makes me unfit for the Throat then it can BUUURN!!" Before this moment she would have aid that was blasphemy.