Hushed Willows Every day I've got a smile where my frown goes

Mae was hardly conscious of all that transpired after she'd slumped to the ground before the golden girl. She remembered fear. She remembered a vaguely familiar face, and her name spoken aloud by someone she'd never met. When she awoke somewhere else entirely she knew that someone must have carried her here — but who?

What stranger would care so much when even her own father had not?

The wild-furred youth groaned softly as she stirred, blinking rapidly but not daring to lift her head. Nonetheless her eyes found another pale blonde figure, larger this time, and for several long moments Mae stared. Who was this woman? Why did her presence feel so much like safety to Mae?

For a wild foolish hopeful heartbeat her throat tightened and she wondered: is this her? Is this my mother? But no — she looked nothing like Mae, and the scent was wrong, and just then she turned and Mae saw now that her eyes were like the sun. Not silver. Her heart fell, but she finally lifted her head in silent greeting.

As the initial shock and grief of the situation wore off, Reverie found herself with a thousand questions. This was certainly Jakoul's daughter, of that there could be no doubt. In nearly every way she mirrored the woman Reverie had once thought of as a friend, a kindred soul in the suffering they'd endured at the changing whims of Swiftcurrent Creek's men. But how had this happened to her, and how had she gotten here? She knew that Jakoul had disappeared, had abandoned her daughter — but what about Akavir?

But no answers were forthcoming, and she had already decided that she would not pry just yet. Not until the girl was settled.

Reverie found it difficult to look at her for very long. Each time she did, she could only see Mae as she'd been the first time she saw her. She would never forget that. Mae was the very first child she'd ever seen brought into the world, and she had been so impossibly small and fragile and beautiful. She'd been troublesome then, too; holding her breath, trying stubbornly to die as much as she was now! Reverie nearly brought herself back to tears with these thoughts, until finally she pushed them away.

She turned to check on the girl and found her awake. Reverie went to her silently, reaching out to touch Mae's paw with one of her own. Jakoul's daughter. Akavir's daughter. But where were they now?

I'm sorry, Mae, She said quietly after a time. She wasn't sure what else to say.

She didn't like the way the woman looked at her. There was a knowing sadness in her eyes that Mae could not quite comprehend — and she knew her name — ! She withdrew her paw sharply when the stranger reached for her, tucking both of her forepaws away and out of reach.

Who the fuck are you? And how do you know my name? Mae demanded, eyes gone from starlight to ice. This was getting creepy, and she had no patience for weird bullshit after all that she'd been through. The girl, she'd trusted, but this woman? She didn't know her. And she didn't want to know her. This feeling, this odd familiarity — she didn't need it.

Reverie went still when the girl withdrew from her, and made no further attempt to touch her. A slight frown knit her features — and deepened when Mae spoke in acidic tones. If she had seen all of Jakoul in her before, now it was Akavir she saw; his influence, his anger. Reverie was hurt, but she tried not to let it show.

I'm Reverie. I um, I knew your mother - and your father, But he hates me, she almost added, before she thought better of it. Instead she said, I was there when you were born. Her eyes traced Mae's features for a moment, the sharp angles of her face and the silver eyes so like Jakoul's. Then her gaze dropped and drifted, and she wondered again what had happened. There was so much anger in her, anger and distrust, and Reverie's heart ached to see it.

Um, are you in pain? I could give you something for it? She dared a glance back toward the girl's face.

I knew your mother.

Mae's breath caught in her throat. Her mother. Her mother. And this woman, this Reverie, she knew Akavir too — but that mattered less to her than the unspoken promise of the knowledge Mae wanted more than anything else, that missing piece of herself which haunted her more with each passing day. The woman who'd given her life; the woman who'd abandoned her.

She scarcely heard the rest of what Reverie said. Any pain she felt now was secondary, insignificant compared to the frantic feeling bubbling up in her chest. You knew my mother? Her voice had dropped to a whisper, eyes fixed unblinkingly on the woman who could not seem to look at her for more than a few moments.

Her heart was in her throat, painfully, when she caught the expression on Mae's face. It was the mention of Jakoul which had captured her attention. Reverie swallowed hard and nodded in silence, gathering her thoughts, wondering what anyone was meant to say in a situation like this. What were the proper words to use when describing a woman she'd hardly known to the daughter who had never met her?

Her name is Jakoul. She um... she didn't talk much when I knew her. I didn't know her for very long, to be honest, She paused, lingering for a moment over her next words. But I know that she loved you. Reverie spoke carefully, aware that this might not be taken well. Jakoul had left. She didn't know why. But she thought that Akavir might have had something to do with it.

Reverie, after all, had been there. She'd seen the pain and the exhaustion. She'd seen the love in Jakoul's eyes, the same love she felt when she looked at Blossom.

What little Reverie shared of her fit with what Mae had always imagined. She didn't talk much. Her name was Jakoul. Jakoul. Jakoul. She repeated it to herself in a whisper, committing it to memory though she might never meet her mother for herself. Why did she leave? Mae wanted to ask, but her throat was felt suddenly constricted and aching, and Reverie was still speaking.

And those last words, they were like a bolt of lightning across her skin; a bright lash of pain Mae hadn't realized she carried so deeply within herself until this moment. She looked down at her paws. You don't know that, she thought hotly, her face burning. You don't know and you can't say that, you can't, fuck you, FUCK YOU —

But when she tried to make the words come out, all she could manage was a strangled gasp. Then Mae started to cry.

Reverie braced herself, expecting the worst; expecting to be cursed at, yelled at. But none of that happened. She watched as Mae stared at her own paws — and then the girl began to cry, and Reverie did not know what to do. Mae was not her daughter; she wasn't hers to hold or to reassure, but those who should have were not here to do it.

She braced herself a second time and reached out, this time wrapping one arm around sharp bony shoulders and pulling Mae into a hug. Maybe she would push her away. Maybe she would be angry again. But it didn't matter. Reverie loved this girl as if she'd been born of her own womb, and maybe that was foolish of her, but how could she not? She pressed her muzzle to the dark forehead, and hoped that Mae would not push her away this time.

This time, when Mae felt the touch around her shoulders and atop her head, she didn't pull away. She folded into the embrace and cried openly, burying her face in the pale fur at Reverie's neck. Why did she leave? Mae nearly choked on the words, and they came out muffled.

This was the question which had haunted her ever since she'd learned to ask it of herself. Ever since she'd become aware of this absence in her life. What was so horrible about her, to have made her mother leave?

Jakoul had loved her, once. Why did she stop?

Mae pressed closer and Reverie wrapped her more fully in her arms, cradling the wounded youth as if she were a much younger child, as if she were her own. Tears filled her own eyes as the girl sobbed into her fur. She didn't know what to say. Jakoul's abandonment, Mae's wounds, Akavir's inexplicable absence; a string of tragedies, and Reverie was helpless to soothe any of these hurts.

But she was here now, and safe. Wasn't that what mattered?

Oh, Mae... Reverie breathed when the girl spoke again, struggling against her own grief. Her voice was tremulous. Swiftcurrent Creek is - it's not a - a kind place for women. Her arms tightened around Mae as if to protect her from such horrors even now, even so far from that awful place. She thought of Akavir now, and her heart hardened. He didn't deserve to be a father. Not if this was how he left his children.

It'd been so long since anyone had held her. The novelty of it nearly halted her tears, but when Reverie spoke again Mae was overcome with another surge of despair. She didn't know what it meant, exactly, but she knew where to place the blame when she heard the words. It was Swiftcurrent Creek which had driven her mother away. It was her father.

I hate him, Mae hissed with sudden fury, still crying. I hate him. He - he never wanted me. He never cared. Her voice broke into another sob and she found that she could not speak another word. She was abruptly tired — no, exhausted. Mae went slack in Reverie's arms. She wondered distantly if the woman would hold her while she slept.

Reverie went still. She felt she knew who Mae was talking about — who else could it be but the girl's father? And now she was caught in her own anger, her own bitterness. Akavir had thought her an irresponsible mother, once. He'd cast judgment on her for it, alienated her from the pack, and that final betrayal — sending that healer, when he knew, he knew how she felt about it.

And he hadn't even asked after Lestan when she'd seen him. Lestan, his cousin, his family, who had loved him so dearly and who had been devastated by his rejection. Nor had he asked after Blossom, whose safety he'd once been so concerned with that he'd hated Reverie for it. Akavir thought her careless, but it was he who left a trail of neglected and shattered love in his wake. Reverie knew that she'd made mistakes, but had she not always acted with love in her heart? And where was the love in this? Family forgotten, a child abandoned...

I know, Reverie finally murmured. I do, too.

You don't have to go back. You can stay with us, if you want. We're making a pack. We're calling it Hearthwood, She smoothed Mae's ears with a paw. You'll be safe here. Loved. I promise.

Mae was too exhausted, too emotionally drained to truly comprehend all that Reverie said. But she understood that she was being offered a place here. Somewhere safe; somewhere she would be loved. And she wasn't sure she trusted it, not from a stranger — but Reverie wasn't quite a stranger, was she?

Her thoughts were too fuzzy for coherency, but some part of her clung to the vague notion that this was as close as she might ever get to truly having a mother. Mae nodded. Yeah, She mumbled, fading. I'll stay. She closed her eyes, and the image of that final assailant came to her. The eye turned to a pit of pus and blood. The slavering jaws.

It's safe here, she tried to tell herself, but nightmares would plague Mae nonetheless.

For a time Reverie stayed there, unwilling to part from Jakoul's daughter. She thought again of that day at Swiftcurrent Creek. She thought of Blossom, and of the children she would have with Boone. None of them had chosen the lives given to them. No one could choose how their own life began.

But someone had made that choice. She had made it, as much as Jakoul and Akavir had, and now Boone would choose it with her. That choice brought responsibility, accountability, something that Reverie had been slow to learn herself though the concept had always lingered heavily over her. But she had learned. She'd learned to choose someone else over herself and her whims, to look to the brightness of her daughter's eyes rather than the dark circles beneath her own, to always try to be there and be loving even when she felt neither of those things. In many ways Reverie had always been, in her mind, the main character of her own life. But having a child changed that.

She wished that Mae's parents had felt the same way. But they didn't, and wouldn't; Jakoul was gone and Akavir immovable, unsympathetic. If he ever knew that Reverie now harbored his daughter, surely he would only hate her more for it. Reverie was beyond caring. Here was his daughter at death's door, suffering alone so far from Swiftcurrent Creek...

Fuck him, Reverie seethed to herself. Eventually she would part from Mae in search of @Boone.