She'd been happy. Despite the uneasiness, despite the imminent end of the world - coming home, seeing Amaris, knowing she had Sacre and Mortimer... it made her happy.

But if the Fire Dancer knows one thing, it's that her happiness never lasts.


----------------------------------------------------

Who's fault is it? Normally, Natraj would be quick to jump in and assure his sisters that it isn't hers, but tonight the fox is silent. He is just as torn as she, a war brewing between disappointment and self-loathing for their betrayal of those they loved, and a very sound knowledge that neither of them had been in full control of their faculties. In fact, the whole event was blurry, unclear, and difficult to remember. Both the fox and his sister held doubts as to whether or not the magic-aided dalliance had even really happened....

...until the copper child's sides began to swell, that is.

As though aware of their presence in their mother's thoughts the twins begin to shift, sharp edges pressing petulantly against the mare's viscera, her pleura, her bones. She winces- carrying one had been wretched enough, but two? Oh, she knows there are two. She can feel them, their magic, each distinct from the other. One is a cool breeze, a soft yet sharp prickle on her tongue; the other a soft sunrise, with magic that smells cinnamon and white. She even knows what their magic is, because it's wreaking havoc on her mind.

She sighs, and grits her teeth, anger and self-loathing rising like a tide within her. Perhaps the winding, narrow path to the Veins was a bad idea - the temptation to throw herself off it and into the harsh blue glow below is strong, and it only her own force of will and the concentration of Natraj that keeps her from acting on the impulse. "If you two don't cut that out, I swear..." the girl's deep voice groans out from behind her clenched jaw, and she turns black eyes back to the path ahead of her, desperately trying to drown out the whirlwind of emotions that rages behind her eyes.

She hates these children, and she hates herself more for it. She wishes she didn't, that she could push the feeling down- but she can't, of course, because one of the little shits keeps making her emotions flare up like wildfires in a Tallsun drought. Sweat is dripping from her brow by the time she reaches the ruined shrines; the sheer force of keeping the other child's magic from making her do something else regrettable has taken a toll on the Fire Dancer, who is now less dancer and more haggard waif. Part of her is content to take the punishment, to suffer as she does. It is her fault at all, for betraying those she loves; her fault for succumbing to the power of the wayward magic. It is her fault for resenting the twins the way does, even though sometimes she doesn't resent them - sometimes she loves them, deeply and terribly, and the force of that protective adoration scares her even more.

But one person cannot take full responsibility for the creation of life, no matter how they may try to- and so, in the absence of her partner in crime, a surrogate is found.

Dark is the night, with a moonless sky, but the girl who stands before the shrine of the absent deity is a beacon of fire and fury, of moonstone and wrath. She gazes upon the ruined altar and the sneer that crosses her face is ugly, unnatural - it doesn't suit her, none of this suits her, and whose fault is that?

"Yours," Fire Dancer hisses at the silent shrine. "This is your fault - yours, and all the gods who abandoned us - but mostly yours, you BITCH!"

The sea echoes back her enraged screams, and the wind seems to mock her as it laughs across the barren stone, dispersing her collection of embers and kissing her painfully, obviously pregnant belly.

A belly that holds the grandchildren of the Goddess her family had once so dutifully served.

I COULD BUILD A BIG MACHINE, DRAW PICTURES FOR THE WALLS
HANG UP ALL MY FRAGILE THOUGHTS, DISPLAYED THAT YOU MIGHT SEE

He comes, because of course he does, because what else could happen to make this situation worse but the face of her mistake, conversational and pleasant. She twitches at the sound of him, pulling away instinctively at his voice - a voice she doesn't know but through a dream, yet it is unmistakable, utterly recognizable, and the girl's heterochromatic ears flatten at it. Even Natraj is uncharacteristically uncomfortable, refusing to return Lyra's greeting and instead coiling beneath his sister's body, his whine a herald of the oncoming storm.

"Guess it runs in the family," the girl half-snarls, still staring at the ruined shrine. She refuses to look at him, because to look at him acknowledges his humanity, that he is a person capable of mistakes the same way she is, that she is just as guilty as he. In this moment it is easier for her to simply blame Mesec, to categorize him with his mother in the cast of characters who have ruined her life. The magic of her children still tears in her mind, and she feels herself spitting it at him without much control, wanting to inflict upon him the same spiritual wreckage she currently endures. Her emotions are sharp as the edge of a knife, razor-thin and ready to break; it takes all her control not to snap like a string and strike him right there. How dare he be so blase, so indifferent to this thing he has done to her.

She wants to say more, to spit out her feelings and her anger and her shame and lay it at his hooves - and, for once, she does. Usually reticent, usually quiet, the girl lets her child's magic wrap around her like a vice. "I love someone," she tells the sky, her voice a calm that contradicts the tension of her body, the brittle character of her stance. "Sacre." His name is a whisper, a choke, a sob- she is unfit to utter it now, and yet she uses it like ammunition, wields it like a sword in her swelling rage. "I love Sacre, yet here I am, and the children I carry are not his." They're yours, she does not add, because she assumes he already knows - that he and his mother somehow planned this, as absurd as that thought is.

She steps closer to the edge of the Veins, dark eyes wild as they look across the sea, copper form illuminated by magma and flame. "The Moon has brought such darkness to our world," she murmurs, deep voice calm. She thinks now of Hototo, of the many others murdered, of her mother, of the endless night. When she looks back at Mesec, though, her eyes are not calm. Nothing is calm about her. She wants to strike him, hard, to brand his heart and leave it beating on the floor. She has never been a wicked girl, but today, she is cruel.

"Wouldn't it be irresponsible, to let her line continue on?"

I COULD BUILD A BIG MACHINE, DRAW PICTURES FOR THE WALLS
HANG UP ALL MY FRAGILE THOUGHTS, DISPLAYED THAT YOU MIGHT SEE