At first, she does not see her. Her feet slow to a stop, eyes rolling down the length of her muzzle to the ground. One ear swivels outward out of habit. She has only heard the song in dreams, clinging to the voice she’d forgotten long ago.
“Mama,” she murmurs, turning her head to greet the matriarch as she speaks. She lifts one leg and turns to better face her and for a long time she doesn’t say anything. Time passes by and takes everything with it, leaving only the mother and daughter standing across from one another. Lotte can’t step into her space but she can step out? When she looks down, a shadow takes up shape on the ground. It does not match her stance but it must be hers.
Her pale eyes travel back up to Lotte’s face and she watches a moment longer as if anything will make any more sense than before.
“Where am I?” she questions. Each direction looks the same, one tree the same as the next, and a thick fog spanning out for miles. “How are you…” she trails off as if the words have disappeared completely from memory. “Am I bleeding?”
Questions swirl through her head without words, almost forming and falling out of reach. She should be overwhelmed, panicked, anxious... it all slides right off and disappears. Lotte appears so poised and proud and her beauty is beyond comprehension.
”I’m not?” she questions, resisting the urge to swipe at her face and feel for herself. The sensation is strange but she blinks a few times and shakes it off, then turning to look at the stones in various colors. She moves back toward the aspiration and takes a step. The circle doesn’t move. When she slips over the barrier, the fog wisps back and forth with the disruption but falls into place afterward. ”I’m sorry, Mama,” she whines and cranes her neck forward a little, slowly slipping into the fog as if she’s scared to touch her.
”I wanted to protect home. I thought if they knew, they’d... I don’t know,” she tries to explain. She struggles to formulate the thought, let alone the words. She’d chosen part of her middle name so that it was still her, devoted to her family. To Teaghlaigh. But it is no more and the allegiance has long since severed, leaving her frayed and floating in the wind. The girl falls silent, tears welled in her ears as she looks to her mother for the story.
Lotte steps up and sweeps her up into the other side. She doesn’t realize how cold she is until they touch and she leans into it. A soft whine escapes her muzzle and she closes her eyes lest they spill over but she is strong—or so Lotte tells her—but she’s seconds away from falling apart. Where is this strength she speaks of? She cannot face her own problems and, instead of facing them head on, she runs away.
Blixen is right about that.
When her mother goes on, she decides she can keep together a little while longer. She pulls away just slightly, listening to the story of some great woman as her eponym. A woman worthy of leadership, of loving her mother, and she bears the weight of expectation she is far from exceeding.
The girl turns her head and presses her face into the woman’s fur, unable to hold back. Tears spill over and meld between her cheeks and Lotte’s mane.
”I am not worthy of a crown,” she says quietly and into her fur. ”I thought if they knew anything, they would throw me out, or think I was a spy,” she tells her, thinking of the conversation with Étoille—oh, how she misses him too—and the fact Drageda would kill her if they found out she’d been lying. ”I am a traitor. I run away from everything. Leaders don’t do that.”
Afraid to pull away and see the disappointment that she is a failure, she stays close a moment longer and releases a shaky breath. ”I did not mean to get lost. I thought I saw Roarke one day, nearby, and...” ran away. She didn’t even stick around or follow after him but he’d been so sure of who he was. But now? ”Maybe if I hadn’t, you’d...” she trails off again and pulls away, eyes lowering to the fog covered ground.
”I never thought I’d see you again,” she says and this time she does not even try to hold back her tears, slumping forward into nothing. How can a mother be proud of this?
Lotte’s reassuring words settle within her. In that moment, they don’t necessarily make her feel better, but the will. In due time. For now, she can at least shed the blame that her mother’s death is her fault. If she had stayed, maybe Lotte’s words are true, or it would have fallen on her anyway. Or it wouldn’t. It doesnt matter the reason she’d been beneath it, just that she had. She closes her eyes when a warm nose touches her cheeks and she leans in, quiet, and without knowing a single thing to say.
After a quiet moment, she leans back into her and eventually sinks her rump to the ground. All the nights she cuddled up to her to sleep, it’s all she’s ever wanted again. One more chance to feel this closeness and to keep the hurt at bay, for a while. Somewhere, she knows she still won’t get it but she can cling to the fleeting tendrils of this world for a little while longer.
She doesn’t seem to notice the change, or maybe she doesn’t seem to mind, but she leans into the embrace as the bigger version of her mother wraps around her like she’d longed for so many times. Even with her eyes closed, she knows the world is changing around her. The fog in the forest turns into a breeze, wrapping around the both of them and the turn into music. The trees turn into lyrics and Lotte’s voice comes and goes and she settles easily into place.
Every worry, every anxious thought, fades back into the song and she presses close to her mother as a scared—but placated—child. There’s questions and other things she’s dreamt is saying to her mother if she were to see her again but all that falls by the wayside as she’s groomed lovingly into a slumber. ”I love you, mama,” she says softly, burying herself so deep into the woman’s fur she becomes lost, swimming in a sea of mercury and gray and back again.
Never has she been more tired but here, she can rest. In her mother’s embrace, her love, her protection… she never has to leave it again. It’s where she’s meant to be. It’s where, above all things, she’s not lost.
Somewhere, the girl is bleeding.
Get up.
Her mother’s voice brings her back, for only a moment, but she’s gone. For good, maybe. Maybe not. She does not stay long, pulled back from the unknown with a final encouragement.
Get up, my girl.