couldnt resist
The children were growing swiftly and spent less and less time hovering about home. Rosalyn kept tabs on where they went, but as they mingled and learned from the pack, she knew they would likely find their own ways and depend less and less on both she and Erzulie. It was a conflicting emotion.
She was, conversely, a ghost lately. She spoke to few and paid attention to only those needed, and slowly her packmates were becoming more and more strangers to her. She could not even say, right now, who remained and who was gone.
This was okay; only one constant mattered.
She passed over the ridge and approached the grotto, and her eyes left the sea to light on Erzulie seated near the entrance.
Share the shade?
She asked, smiling some as she came. It was hot and she was tired, for the moment, of walking in circles. Most of the prey seemed to have the same idea, hiding in darkness for the moment.
It truly had. Children did not make things worse, but they did make things harder. So much of their time had been shared five ways that it was hard to remember the last they'd sat like this, alone.
It has.
Confirming it aloud, though, she smiled. It reminded her suddenly of their place in the bay, isolated by the cliffs, where many of their early moments had begun. It has been quiet.
Not necessarily in a favorable way, but silence was better than angry packs assaulting their borders. Caiaphas and now her family were gone, Raleska's departure felt with some measure of irritation and regret, but you could not deny that the grotto slept while the witch was departed.
Her heart broke for her as Erzulie spoke, sounding so bitter. She was soft for this in a way she was not even for their children, but she waited, listening as she cursed her own defense of this place. Months ago, Rosalyn might have felt in some way vindicated, but at present she was too tired. Besides, surprisingly, this wasn't what she had wanted either.
You fought for them, they fought for me, and you deserved this place.
She said, unusually carefully. My place was Ironsea. Since then, nothing but you has felt right.
And at times, not even they had been the same. But the tests had only made them stronger, she thought. You weren't wrong for trying to have this.
For a while she had certainly resented being forced to stay when she so wanted to leave. But in the end, she knew, she could have left. Leaving would have been her choice, just as staying had been her wife's. She'd chosen Erzulie, and there was no regret there either.
I don't know.
She'd stopped considering it, honestly. Even as the pack disappeared around them, she hadn't thought they would leave. Was there anywhere she wanted particularly to go? She fell silent, considering that. It wasn't that she didn't want to leave. She just wondered if there was a place out there that would hold more for them, and how they might find it.