Blackfeather Woods nothing but the burnt edge of an unfinished history

Fade here?

She is angry in every regard. Angry with herself and all of her failings. Angry with the pack she had been born into, and been loyal to her whole life. Angry at the siblings who had lived beside her and failed her, despite their promises to protect her. Angry that the children she had raised — all of them — had been failures, to her, to the pack, to her mother, and to the guards. And she was exceptionally angry at the large man before her, laying prone and pilant to her wishes. She had few true lovers all of her life. She had bedmates and many of them, but only two had her heart, and one man had it without even touching her.

Potema looked back on everything she had done and felt herself become regretful for every pompous word she had said, everytime she had thrown her support in with who she thought she could trust. Bitterness welled up inside her, as if salt had been poured into her body. But she had a few glimmers of light, at least that she could see: she could only forgive two — herself and Kjalarr.

He speaks of other children, but Potema is not surprised or indignant. It is clear to her that he had not cared for them either. If she were to assume that they were the same age as Vaati, then he had left them long ago, the first time he came to the Woods. She expected it, both the children's existence and their abandonment, or at least she tells herself that she does.

When he calls her High Priestess she has to suppress the shudder that goes through her. It was the one thing that she had never lived up to become. She could never be the same woman as her Mother, etheral and distant, with an otherworldly presence to her. She tried to, so hard. She wished she could be his High Priestess in truth rather than his own — their own fiction. Her head rests on him for a time. She does not close her eye, merely staring forward, watching the reflection of the pool's water against the cavern's wall. The witch — she was more witch than High Priestess, bitter and hating and isolated she was — rose suddenly, a decision made in her mind. Come, She commands, her body straightened. Her mind whirls at the quick change in elevation, but she stills herself against the wobble her body wants to make. She wants to lead him away from this place, one that holds many regrets for her.