Mother's Visit: The Nightmare

[Meleth Darkshine]

Moonlight cascaded in through the drapery, the sun approving gold and white cloth billowing to the breeze of opened windows. The evening's pale luminescence bathed over everything it could touch inside the Darkshine's bedroom, until it met with an objectionable, fire-light yellow in the corner, at a desk that Meleth rarely saw used at such an hour since the day her husband had decided sleep more worthwhile than he had ever before given it credit.

She did not think too deeply on why he had not heard her come close, or what she had been doing before she was standing here. She only knew she craved his attentions enough to interrupt him with a quietly purred, "A'mael.. "

He did not look up.

The shapeshifter came forward, wrapping her arms around his neck and planting a small kiss to his cheek. She peeked over his shoulder as she came so close, curious as to what had been so successful in taking up all of his focus. Her ever-wild eyes darted over blueprints, letters, broken-sealed envelopes of Noctivagan houses and other similarly toned items. Meleth had seen such things before; the spoils of reconaissance and quiet action before action, but she could not remember any of these particularly.

They were new.

"Ah, now I see, even if I do not know. What are you hidin–"

It was hard to say which was more peculiar – the fact that it had happened so fast and abruptly to her touching him, or the fact that Harliven Darkshine, Black Prince of the Elves and, even in his most affectionate stages, Meleth's unfaltering mountain and alpha wolf was crying.

He stood up, and it was then that Meleth's lack of recollection to the moments before this one made sense. As he walked completely through her, she craned her neck to follow his figure across the bedroom. Vision locked upon a mirror not too far from her then, she frowned at being greeted by no reflection, and the realization that she was not there at all.

"He mourns you in this plane, child," whispered a series of barely audible, genderless tones.

The scene began to bleed away, the room and her mate melting before and around the presumably dreaming shapeshifter. In it's place was the cool, sweet scent of everything in a likeness to a forest after rain, and the pale grey of mist flooding empty space. The ground beneath her bare feet rippled like water and was wet to the touch, though it did not give way to her steps and it reflected nothing – not even the inferno that endlessly crossed the sky, if it was a sky at all.

"This plane. That plane," Meleth repeated and then decided, since it would seem they were no longer in the place of mention. "But it is not mine, Mother?"

Mother. Gaia. The beholder and parent of life and creation, spirit of nature in all of it's forms and essences, and second only to Time himself.

"No, it is not yours. Not yet," came the whispers again, the ever changing and undecided series of voices only a deeper reflection of how the speaking Goddess was not one thing, but everything. "Perhaps not ever, if you are smart."

Finally She revealed Herself, stepping out of the mist to rest a set of pure white eyes upon the elf. Her figure was not one, but many, it's lines hard to discern in their transparency. Every step She took and angle she changed seemed to make her appear differently: a human man, an eagle, a fawn, a bear, until finally she stopped walking and settled to Meleth's mortal eyes as a translucent elephant amongst the mist.

The wild elf did not seem altogether surprised, signing that she had been within this elemental realm before. Instead, she stayed on topic and dared the question, "So there is a choice then."

"Between you and your cub. Artair."

Meleth was visibly, and of course understandably, displeased by the reply.

Gaia offered the Archdruid another vision, though this one was not quite as immersive as the first had been. The elephant canted her head, seeming to tear open the very space and mist beside her as if opening a window to another place in the timeline. The movement changed the Goddess' shape to a frighteningly oversized spider, though Meleth did not seem to entirely notice as she fixed herself upon the offered view of her future 'choice'.

The courtier so often entrusted with the care of the children, Lady Ardon, was recently deceased. Three arrows pierced completely through her body, all of them precisely vital shots and all of them designed of a different crafting hand. A pool of blood was still expanding from beneath her, soaking into her pale blue garments and staining into the elf's auburn hair.

Artair gripped tightly to his mother's hand, and stared at the first dead body with wide and frightened eyes. It would be forever burned into his memory, Meleth knew, and so she saw no reason to linger for goodbyes.

The shapeshifter darted away, pulling Artair along as quickly as the two could go down the halls of the Tower of Calemistar. She ventured for her private chambers, safely away from any stairwells for any more of their 'party' to get sniped out by invading archers.

"Your youngest will break his leg," spoke the Goddess quietly as Meleth continued to watch in confusion, horror, and rage. "A ploy to separate his parents. Your mate would take the cub to the infirmary for treatment, as you and the caregiver will take the other to console him on his sibling's injury. Neither child will speak on how it happened out of fear, leaving assumptions to roughhousing gone too far."

"And my choice.." Meleth sighed out as tears swelled in her eyes at what else the vision had to show her.

"Hide in here. Do not speak. Do not scream. And so help me, you do not look," snapped Meleth to the nodding, still terrified Artair. "Your father will come and get you out when it is safe."

"B.. Bu' why won' you?" the boy begged through tears, reaching for the collar of her dress from his small cubby in the magically grown wall.

"Cover your ears now, and remember that what I ask of you is for your own good."

There was a slam to the heavy, locked door of the Archdruid's quarter. Meleth planted a small kiss on Artair's forehead and wordlessly pushed her son into the cubby the rest of the way before she slammed the door and vines grew over it's cracks to better seal and hide him.

They were lucky. There was just enough time for her to do so before the second slam burst the door fully open.

".. Is to accompany Ardon and Artair in the attacked tower, or Harliven and Thalion to the healer, and personal safety."

"Correct," Gaia confirmed with another physical shift that forced her into the shape of a raccoon.

"You have never.. given me so much insight, Mother. Never true details. Why now?" Meleth questioned, still unable to tear her eyes away from the scene that the Goddess was allowing her to view, perhaps watching so closely for any opening or falt that would allow a change.

They poured into the room, wearing armors of all varieties and unncessary emblems of the Empire and it's overseas mercenaries. Bands of strange looking men and women that served only the highest bidder, demons, and even daywalking vampires dared themselves into the shapeshifter's room, but none attacked. Instead they circled, quickly moving to still closed windows with their eyes fixed on the lone elf, grins on their faces but obvious hesitance and perhaps a worry of her escape on their minds.

Meleth noted then that most of the screams in tower halls had stopped.

A demon stepped through the door with heavy boots and cracked his neck, his frame massive against all of the others and his chuckle deep as it was foreboding. Both of his thick, crimson brows lifted as he watched Meleth curiously, "A source of so much trouble for the Empress in such a tiny package. I am interested to seeing if all Darkshines are so.. petite.. or if you are simply the runt of the family."

The tower lashed out, perhaps to her calling or perhaps not, and a few of the free vines that made up the walls snapped out from their places and firmly gripped around the demon's throat. All three tugged and tore in different directions, choking and tearing flesh to pure friction.

Meleth did not wait to watch, and neither did her attackers. Still, even as the speaking demon's head was quickly removed to the pressure of the assaulting earth magics, and even as the wild elf managed to shift quickly and sometimes in separate pieces from cougar to bear, outnumbering was almost always a winning tactic.

Meleth looked away, perhaps not so interested in watching herself get murdered, and instead looked to Gaia for an answer to her previous question. The Goddess allowed the inquiry, answering now as an elk. "Because I would seek for you to ignore maternal instinct. To let the cub go and die with Ardon."

The elf hissed through her teeth, the gesture aggressive and strangely feline to one raised in a wolf's body.

"He is mine, as you are, and you will obey as I demand!" Gaia's voice was booming now, whispers still present in all of their tones, but somehow multiple tones also becoming louder and angrier with the godsend's immediate defiance.

"He is my son. Did you think I would be receptive to such a request?!"

"He will die, or you, and your mate, and his brother, and all else in your world will. All things have lead to his birth, for his death. His energies, creatable only by the perfect choice of parents, will never be fully unleashed until he is free of his physical imprisonment."

Meleth found herself sickened, but still curious. Gaia was telling her so much of the future and what would be necessary for it, and the shapeshifter could not help but find it odd.

".. The perfect choice of parents.."

"Your life has been tampered with from the beginning. Your timeline rearranged. Do not act surprised. If not for a dream, your mate would not know you. If not for a tragedy, he would have been married even if he did."

The torn opening in the mist changed to a different vision now.

A small girl fell over the edge, plunging into icy and serpent infested waters. The crew began to yell of losing a passenger, and faces appeared to peer down over the edge to search for what had already sunk into the blackness.

Or was dragged.

Kelp entangled itself around the child's legs as if it was possessed, and pulled her down deeper to prevent any chance of escape. The sea snakes and monsters of the deep had been beckoned here by forces unknown, the sea too vast to naturally have made her prey within moments.

Meleth stared horrified at a boy who watched helplessly. A boy who, as a man and as a Prince, was uneased by water.

"You.. "

"I reclaimed, to save all in the long run and greater good. The boundaries and laws have been tampered with, and so too must we tamper, if we are ever to defend. Even if we must go back to do it. I explain this to you only to display my sorrow for making you go against what is natural. To make you knowingly wait, even watch, as your son's physical body is destroyed. I explain this to you because you are my Daughter in the truest sense, as opposed to merely what I have spawned."

There was a long pause, and even Gaia Herself seemed somehow uneased by what she was asking of the shapeshifter – perhaps because it was going against the laws of nature that She had created.

"You have heard my warning. Heard what I have to tell and show you, and heard of the choices you must make. Your husband's dreams are of a likeness. He knows not how it will begin, so he may not tamper, but he ultimately understands what you face. He knows what I have done. Go and console him."

---

Meleth shot upright, waking abruptly in her real bed, in her real plane. Her eyes were wide, her breaths panicked and of quick pace, and beads of sweat in her stresses forced her to glisten in the faint glow of twilight.

[Harliven Darkshine]

It was Saralin who apologized, a young woman in that dream with a pixie-like tousle of carnelian hair. It was Saralin, with her bright eyes and sorry smile that took his hands and kissed them tenderly, the burns still on her own from all the times she had held onto him to calm his child-like tempers. It was Saralin, that lovely sunrise of a girl, who looked at him with a body as old as she should’ve been that year, stating – in this fashion – all the potentials of her life which had been confiscated from her. It couldn’t have been anyone but Saralin to confide the truth of the matter to him, or the futility of it all to fight this time. It had to be her, the epitome of duties, the one who had lost the most earliest, who had to be there and tell him exactly how it had to be for him – to step aside like he used to, and not let his phantoms rage while his wife made a choice that she would despise with every fiber of her being. It was Saralin who, at the end of the entire vision, looked back at the open door which would lead to their cabin, seeming distraught by her own revelations, from the deck of the old ship.

When she was questioned, the little sprite bit her lip and looked at his face as though she wanted to sob for them, and she related everything that she felt at that moment: she thought she had glimpsed them there – the pearly, pale corpse of her younger self, and Harliven’s stricken young form, watching them secretly from the door. She was sure that at the moment of the tragedy they had both known – both the dead girl and the live boy – that fate hadn’t wanted their friendship anymore, and they had simply forgotten to be defiant against destiny that time. She wanted to know if he had a portrait of his wife, the woman who had replaced her in the scheme of things, and she wanted to know if she was as lovely as his adoring heart suggested. She wanted to know everything about his two sons, Artair and Thalion, and she wondered if she would ever return to the living world to have sons herself.

Harliven looked, too, through the door and found his life there as it swung on its hinges; yes, yes, he supposed she did see them, and he wondered at what they were whispering to each other – he couldn’t remember everything he’d told his best friend as she lay an empty husk in that room – but he thought that he had, looking back, always known that it would end up out of his hands like this. That he, in the end, would be the helpless one. Yes, yes he did carry her portrait, always, because he liked to criticize it – the way the painters, for all their skill, could not capture the essence of her smile, the boldness of her expression, or the great strength of spirit pinned to her presence. His sons – the most precious of his possessions, secretly superior to any being he had ever before adored in the world, who might’ve one day ruled Silvanus because Oriel would not marry, and he and Faedyn would have none of the throne. And yes, he ventured, he thought she would be given her time, too. Even Aeon’s godsend, she who erased the effects of time from the living, always failed to prevent them from continuing their due course. Saralin had been borrowed from the living world. He was certain that she would have it back, and maybe she would remember him with as much love as he remembered her. They were only children, perhaps, but children loved each other more than grown beings ever did.

He was so calm, she remarked, and it hurt her. She apologized for dying – for forcing his lovely wife, who seemed so gallant, to have to consider the options before her. She asked him, before he awoke, if he was sorry that he had ever met the Druid he had come to love so much. He could only explain that it would’ve been unfair to all of them if he had suffered marriage to anyone else, and that there was no point to mourning in this realm where there was nothing alive he could grasp at. She smiled bitterly; it was true.

The railing before them was like polished gold, and her bare toes upon it balanced as the sky ran together with the water, and the darkness melted away; the wood turned into flesh, and there was a serpent there, who turned its head to snap at her heels, and the petite elf woman merely laughed delightedly at the impertinent thing, shedding her sadness and giving it back to him, the tenderness of mourning as gentle as any embrace. “Be alive for a little while,” she chided him, “since I can’t heal your heart in this state,” and she dodged back over the tail of the serpent, whose body was knotted into the posts which should’ve supported the real rail, and Harliven recoiled as it writhed and Saralin allowed herself to fall back, a blissful free-fall that inspired a moment’s horror at her danger. Her laughter stilled him, however, and he realized the colors of this world were running dark; the other fascets of the ship escaped, morphing as birds pulled themselves from the wood, diminishing the framework, and soon all he knew was the feel of feathers around him and the solidity of a stone floor.

“Has she told you everything you need to know?” It was raven again, just one, the four-eyed bird who sometimes wore his father’s face, the great trickster who had become the Mïr’malik’s close companion and had come into the world to retaliate against the Ombra.

More than he wanted to hear. More than he wanted to hear..

He had had his visions in installments, the dreams about Saralin a private reoccurance since the attack on the castle. She had wanted to learn everything, that girl – that girl who would’ve been his wife. She had asked him impersonal things at first, then of the war and all his plans, then of what he used to be, and of how much he had changed over the years. When he finally knew her she asked philosophical things about life, everything he’d learned, wanting answers, wanting life in the form of knowledge. Later she had kissed his fingers and called them friends again, even if there was a barricade between them that always stood between life and death, and was reinforced by the great love he held for his wife and the great love she held for loneliness and cages – imprisoned, this time, by nature itself – and finally she had told him everything. He knew it had happened in this way to make sure he believed it and understood the weight of it, even if he refused it all and loathed it all.

When Meleth stirred he was already at the balcony, looking over his sister’s kingdom, though it had been something of his empire in this war; he felt it, all the shame and hurt and revelation, snaking into his bones like the burn of Saralin’s hand. This evening, when it was all finished for him, she must've been told it all at last. He didn’t know the exact circumstances that fate would place her in this time, and this made him wild with demands: what did she know – she, Gaia’s dear daughter, the one who was told everything that he was not? The craving to go see his sons, to stir them from their beds and take them into his own, seemed to strangle him. It was strange. He wanted to grieve, wanted to more than anything – where were his tears? Why couldn’t he do it? – and instead of recoiling from his wife, or sounding his voice to console her, or going immediately to gather up his sons, he stood there, staring at the forest.

Oh, how little he knew. This despair was far greater in magnitude than anything he had ever felt, but he didn’t know. All he knew was that he had risen an hour ago, pulled his robes over him in a hurry as though he would fulfill every one of his compulsions, but instead went to the window. Perhaps it had something to do with how badly his hands shook, how his face was cold and damp with unexpected tears, and his head felt as if it were burning, filled with scorpions and serpents that buried their poison into him and broiled him in madness.

He had to challenge it. He couldn’t challenge it. It was sacrifice. It was blasphemy. Why – why his son? Why now? Why the boy, his boy, his precious one…

And all along these thoughts the suffocating reality: he had been a doll. His losses, his miseries – perhaps all of it was staged just so he could meet her, could be arranged to choose her over everything he held dear, thinking, of course, that it was because he loved her. The Prince himself couldn’t even question his feelings towards her without despising himself, and yet he felt used and felt that she had been deceived in her life. What was he to say, now that she had awakened? How could he comfort her when he, himself, had been reduced to such shambles? He must step aside, but why? Why, and why, and what? What was the meaning of this – why did this have to pass in such a fashion, with all of them powerless to resist fate? What was the worst of it here? That if the Ardentians did not invade and slay his sons by some means, the Templiers would? That Syrus might join that later group to destroy Harliven’s first, precious son? That if all else failed, cold Hiraos would come upon the group, that ill-fated human man, to perform the act on Emeiyenae’s will? Even if that godsend loved them, too, she loved her Gods more.

“Do you think,” he asked wretchedly, despairingly, as he called out to his Laelorevé, breaking the silence, his own hysteria sharpened by the flavor of her aura. “Do you think, Meleth, that I could be powerful enough to challenge a God?” And there, the emotion that Saralin had lain over his shoulders before she had left, all of the weight and understanding of death she had harbored from their conversations – it was all infecting his mind now, sharpening the great horror of it all. Had it been like our world, we would have murmured the old stories over again: and so Abraham killed Isaac, except Harliven’s commandment was – to him – an even greater terror because he could have no part in it, no choice to obey or rebel.

What would it have been if our story had been different, and Abraham had been a King in a war, grasping onto his family not only in great love but as the last vestiges of his mortality – of his sanity? And so Abraham let his son die…?

[Meleth Darkshine]

There was a moment there where Meleth could only stare forward, her sweaty palms gripping tightly onto the covers and a mixture of tears and sweat cooling on her cheeks. She was aware of Harliven's place, in tune with his not being beside her as much as she ever was his actual aura, but her thoughts were forced away from him for that instant for reasons both within understanding and yet beyond the true comprehension of any sane person. The sickening twist of guilt panged her stomach, the dull illness of shame and responsibility for Gaia's iniquities against her family – her husband especially – nearly making it impossible for the generally quick-witted druid to come up with any immediate reply. He had been a puppet, and even if she had never known and thus was little more than a marionette herself, the shapeshifter could not help but to feel as if she was at fault for the injustices he'd suffered.

The injustices he'd suffered for this; to come to the greatest that could be asked of either of them.

"I know," Meleth finally murmured out after a hard swallow, her voice quite obviously desperate to reclaim it's calm in some attempt to be, to feel, strong for her quietly crumbling Aikasse. "That we have all challenged things we never once thought we had the power to." And so she would not directly discourage him, and perhaps it would leave her from feeling completely discouraged as well. It was all she could offer him then, the subtle gift of choice after the lesson and acknowledgement that he never had any.

As she slipped from the covers and hesitantly drew closer to his place on the balcony, her mind raced for anything to say that might still his troubles and heal her heart. Each step seemed too fast, the time for her to think passing her by too quickly for anything productive to result. The impact of everything, the adrenaline of her nightmares, the sense of overwhelming and enveloping vulnerability left every muscle weak. She stopped and leaned against the balcony beside him, not looking to him but sharing in the scenery – a scenery that, for that moment, she could not help but loathe.

And to loathe it only made it worse.

Tears swelled in her eyes then, the realization of it only magnified as she woke fully from her troubled slumber. Shakily, she could not help but to breathe out a silent truth and claim. The admission only proved how sure she was that Harliven, the only one she was capable or willing to turn to, must have resented her for all that had come to pass and was to be in the future. It proved her guilt, and her anger to the claims made by the Goddess that would give and take everything on the neutral whim that Meleth had come to love. It proved her helplessness.

"He is my son too."

[Harliven Darkshine]

The Archdruid’s advance was sensed but not acknowledged as she rose from the bed, his jade-haired wife, his Laelorevé, and if Harliven had been able to conjure any of his strength he would’ve reached out to her with his aura. There was a part of him, too stunned to be affected by any of it, that stirred at her approach and tried feebly to envelop her in his normally calm presence. As it was, he could conjure nothing but a vague, faceless hysteria, a definite sense of loss, and courage broken into a thousand toy splinters. What could he do? Nothing.

“I’ll destroy this world of hers,” he whispered, voice hoarse – broken. His resolve crumbled, a feeble defense against the world, and a strangled cry broke his throat – infuriated, defiant, and pained. There was two much emotion and, at once, you could tell he was maddened; the probes of his men fell upon him, the energies of his companions – his dearest soldiers, his great companions – reaching for his own. What is it? came the whisper of their lives, the brush of their auras beseeching, calculating and anxious, unyielding despite how he battered them away easily with his own, cracking against the concern of the palace guardians as they searched for some explanation of the shout they’d heard. He whirled then, face disfigured by some great self-hatred and, in that moment, the rotting core of his indomitable mask seemed to break passed his crumbling spirit. It was the old expression from years before – the one he had always feared her seeing, had always warned her against – and it held all the mounting pressures of things he couldn’t prevent and couldn’t control.

The war, to him, was nothing; the fate of his sister, now, was nothing; the wrathful face of his father and his own demons were nothing; and yet he felt punished for the outlaws’ great transgression and hated himself for it. What was he, the indecisive husband, the beast who couldn’t defend his own den? Did he know what he was saying in that last proclamation? Did he mean it, as it looked by his expression, when he so recklessly claimed he would destroy the world? Perhaps. If he could claim so freely to wreck vengeance upon Earth for Oriel, undoubtedly he could do it for his dear, marked son. “What would She do, then?” came Harliven’s anguished cry, his eyes tightly closed as his fingers clutched at his hair; it looked as though he could feel the pain of it all pounding within his skull, battering him apart from the inside. “Who would She use to crush me, if I called for war against Her?” But beyond it all there was the helpless futility of the entire thing, the hopelessness, and it was clear he was utterly defeated: in a single dream, in a swift revelation, Gaia had taken the most fundamental of his powers away from him, the only thing that had let him feel.

She had taken from him his ability to save them all, had announced his limits. He couldn’t win this war, then, if Artair had to be sacrificed for their success. He, the Black Prince, the Night Court’s King, could protect no one from the Empress’s grasp – their grasp, those monsters’. The whispers that he had made in solitude, maddening and all he had in the war-ravaged Dustanova of that day, meant nothing: all the vows that he’d made, that they would never harm her again, were useless. It should’ve been inconceivable to him but the mounting discussions with Saralin and this final revelation made it clear: he was useless, in the end. He could save nobody. He could do nothing.

What did it matter, then, if he warred against Gaia for this great betrayal? For this sudden destruction of everything he stood for, packaged neatly in the swiftly demanded demise of his son? He would only be knocked down, and his Artair would be dead. His son. His son..

Meleth’s son.

And he recoiled as soon as he opened his eyes, seeing her face as though not expecting her proximity, features trembling as he tried to gather is resolve once more, and he moved to embrace her as though he didn’t know what else to do with himself – what else to say. Perhaps she knew the most wounding of it all as it hit him: that maybe, if it was to save the world, he could’ve killed his son. Like the great ancestral memory of mother wolves, which made them turn upon their mates in recollection of males who devoured their young for survival, it would’ve been better that his wife be spared the choice – that the option was out of her hands – and it was given to him, so she could disdain him and blame him for it all. It was her role by the Goddess to sacrifice herself for them and now, with the choice forced upon her, the Prince was at a terrible loss.

“What am I to say?” he asked her, his tone strengthening despite its strain, its utter desolation – a defeated man, a defeated father. It seemed that he was grasping madly for the shambles of his thoughts, remembering suddenly to be strong for her although crazed by his own selfish emotion. “How do I comfort you? Do I tell you how it would destroy me if you chose to save him and died? Must I illustrate the devastation of his death? Perhaps I am to talk of duty and politics; of how the world wouldn’t miss a child but would miss you in its meaningless processions of self-warranted importance! Shall I call upon His Majesty, that savage human King, and ring him to hunt in our woods and ask – did that damn daughter of his dirty her hands in this plot with the gods?”

Although his voice cracked then in its absolute grief, and it was clear that he – at least – allowed bitter tears to trail down his face, he didn’t sob. He inhaled sharply, drove the tremor out of his shoulders and fought with himself, desperately reaching for any remaining vestiges of his noble stature. Though he was silent for a moment the wild, whip of his life magick seemed to become more controlled, settling into a chaotic barricade that pushed out the probes of his subordinates and – gently this time – kept them at bay. The thoughts running through his mind were rapid and yet, despite how feverishly he searched, he couldn’t find anything he could say to her – only self-centered horror and degradation of his being. “I am a fool,” he confided, as though the moment of weakness was over and it was like his pitiful companionship of her when they first met. “I could never console your fears or your anxieties – I could only orchestrate heroics at the end of it all, mock a rescue attempt and pretend it meant something. I wish… I wish I could forget myself and make it easier for you. I wish that I had been composed enough when you’d woken to tell you it was just a dream. I wish… and you can’t even cry. Is it so terrible? Must you be so much stronger than I?”

[Meleth Darkshine]

Meleth let him pull her in, her head resting naturally against his chest and her eyes closing as she listened. As his physical form held her, however, her aura – the very essence of herself – poured out in a way that only elves could determine or sense, and seemed to just as instinctively mix with Harliven's as if it were some attempt to soothe the very core of his soul. If she was at all aware of the seemingly intrinsic spiritual gesture, she showed no sign and it was difficult to decide. Her pains, fears and worries were all present within that aura. None of them were shielded away from him in a way that would claim her trying to be his pillar, and perhaps she was merely finding a sense of comfort for herself as well. Surely, it was further affirmed in her quietly murmured words, their pained calm worse than any shaky tones he offered, "And did they mean nothing, Aikasse? I have always been consoled in knowing that you would be there to do.. something.. anything at the end of it all. It soothes me to know you would not forget yourself to 'make it easier' for me."

"I worry I could not muster enough tears if I started.. I.. You are the very reason for my strengths, Harliven. And She knew it all along. I'm no stronger than you – I'm no stronger than anybody. At this moment, I am resigning to watch my eldest cub die terrified and without me not for a strife-ridden world or it's corrupted inhabitants. Not for a Goddess who has betrayed you and I. But because I cannot.. I will not lose all of you, even if you were never supposed to be mine at all.. I.. "

Worried or not on how many tears she could manage, to think and to speak on the fine details of her 'strengths' crippled her there. She choked upon her words and gave up on trying, turning to bury her face within his chest as his own moment of weakness came to a pause, and hers began to erupt. Similarly, there was no sobbing, just tears and shaky breaths, trembles and the skipping beats of her heart and soul to a reality she could not truly fathom.

Her upbringing clashed wildly with the demands of the divine that raised her, and both battered against her heart for it's frivolities. Her family was nothing – she was nothing. If the great balance of all things called for one's passing into realms beyond their own, she was not to question it. Within her, turmoil cursed her spirit and confusion plagued her instincts. Loyalty to her family had quickly tied with her loyalties to Gaia and all of her beliefs on the natural world, for, was not the sacred nature of the home – the den – one such belief in itself? How was she truly a mother at all if she was to stand aside and ignore her responsibility to protect?

Even then, was she ignoring it if to lose Artair saved Thalion? Her mate?

The tigress who chose one cub over the other to carry, and to save from a pillaged den. It was as natural as anything then, when one thought about it well enough. It was an every day occurance – and still she could not stop herself from the tears that soaked against Harliven's chest.

"No," she resigned again, this time with more purpose and understanding. Her fears were faced every day by beasts better than her. "I am stronger than no one."

[Harliven Darkshine]

He felt it: the tendrils of her being, the very essence of everything she was, pouring in around him and entwining their selves into the spirit around him. Like resilient flora they found the cracks in his barricade, prying through the walls that so adeptly kept the others out. The Prince couldn’t ignore the profusion of raw emotion blossoming against his own aura, flourishing amidst his own pain and receiving nourishment upon it. For a moment, a deep, shuddering inhalation was the only signification that he felt her at all; moments later his grip had tightened against her small body and he bent his head to bury kisses into her tousled hair, enfolding her so tightly in his arms that she might’ve disappeared there to drown in her tears. The dampness spread over the front of his robes, but he couldn’t force himself to care: all there was in his world was their fate, their sons, and her shuddering words of resignation.

Oh, his Laelorevé. His saving grace had fallen from the greatest height she could’ve climbed, and now – wounded and crushed, it seemed – she had been given back to him, and he was worth nothing in consolation. It was the greatest woe of that unhappy pair that each constructed their strength on the foundations of the other. How far they had come in that fashion; how far behind they had left their old selves – the shadows of themselves that could’ve turned away from this great tragedy, and called it the right of the Wild. He stirred now, his darkest instincts – his identity as the Black Prince – being spurred to lift its head upon the matter: his wife cried, and what right did he to waste tears for either of them? Prior truths – former truths – echoed in his head: that he would never weep because others deserved to cry first. And here – here! – he had broken before her, spilling the weight of his sorrow over her breast to needle at her heart on top of hers, and bitter shame ensnared him.

Although these things must’ve been evident to her if she so much as reached out to take stock of him, he didn’t wait for her to realize his guilt again. This time, he steadied himself, forcing back all tortured expression to catch his breath, hoping to let his face dry against the night air. “Oh, how we cry – and he is the martyr,” he murmured, as though it were a revelation to him. “At the end of it all, we’re both so human…” and so he melded his own magic, fitting against hers, forcibly shaped to comfort her. In it he focused every ounce of his love, all his longing for her from battle campaigns and nights in war parlours, and the deep affection that had always made her feel like a sacrifice – giving up so much of her wild life to join him in the cage. Did she sense him, fighting to get a hold of himself? Fighting to look at the entire ordeal as one new survival tactic, as something purposeful and wise? How he groped for his father’s wisdom, for his own ordeals, for everyone he admired! Sacrifices had to be made. They were made daily in that war – made of lords and companions and worshipers. In Glendenvale they were made of mothers, children and elders; in Noctivagus they were made of the ancient houses, and Ardentia in whole paid in grace…

He stopped himself abruptly from expressing something, stiffened as an idea came into his head and was pinned there. In horror he looked over his wife’s head, wondering how he’d thought it, trying to conjure some new comfort or assurance for her. “Terrible again,” he uttered softly, seeming stricken, but unable to banish the new thought. Yes, males who ate their cubs to survive… And he pulled the toxic thought into him, trying to filter it away from her so she wouldn’t recoil from him. It was only natural for it to occur to Harliven to kill his son himself – to sit as Abraham did with Ishmael, and to love him, and use that the trust between father and son to slit his throat calmly, without fear from the latter, and only trust…

To watch my eldest die alone and afraid…

No. Banish the thought. He couldn’t do it – he would not!

The strangled laugh echoing in his mind broke through his lips then; what a pair they must’ve looked, one laughing, one crying, two with tear-stained features… and he made to smooth her hair, to steady himself – be strong, be strong! It could’ve been anyone’s voice echoing in his ears – to introduce some of his old, tactical patience back into it. “A terrible father! A loathsome husband. Already I’m trying to take the choice away from you…” And how tired his voice was, how difficult to mask with make-believe strength, but he was doing it – doing it steadily, building himself up, trying to ignore it all – trying to forget it – and letting an image of Artair flare into his mind’s eye: Artair, playing with Thalion; Artair, watching him spar with Matthieu; Artair, newly in the cradle, and then with his eyes open; Artair, whose tiny arms clutched his neck as though it were the most natural thing in the world; Artair who was a Prince only after he was their son, even though it was just the reverse for his father.

Artair, who would be the victim of it all – the lamb, the sacrifice.

“He’ll know us,” Harliven voiced quietly, not wanting to let her go; his first impulse, however, came back to him, echoing in his bones, encouraging him to go. “He’ll know us, grieving for him, for we won’t be able to lie about our sorrows. I don’t want him to die misunderstanding it – the anguish, the hurt, that he’ll find in his parents: there’ll be too many painful hours in life to explain them to Thalion, I pray, but not enough for Artair to realize their meaning. If he must die afraid, then let him die in faith – in love for this world I so bitterly despise now. When your tears are spent, we’ll go to him – to both of them, our sons. Arden –” and here was one thing, already, that he knew nothing about – that Arden would be sacrificed alongside Artair, “will not stop us when she discovers our faces. Let Gaia damn us now if she’ll begrudge us even a moment with our sons.”