Noctisardor Bypass hosa

backdated to august 5th, set several hours after this! gideon will have disappeared from rivenwood with signs of a brief struggle at the rendezvous <3

heda could have borne it had @Anselm taken @Gideon with him, if in some last moment of anger and resolution, he had sought to hurt her a final time. heda knew she would have been able to shoulder such misery, for she understood inherently that her son would not have been harmed by his father, no matter what rage he might have held for @Amadeo.
but anselm had not done this, and she knew too that he would not have done something so cruel, no matter if she desired it now over the unknown. he would have only disappeared suddenly from rivenwood, not — not —
she held broken grass between her palms, breathing in what remained of gideon's presence in the rendezvous. the desire to sink down had been initial, but she first assured herself and @Druid that the other children were safe, that @Ezra too had not been taken.
stiffly, soddenly, heda had returned then, to sit amid what was left as her thoughts fought one another.
while amadeo and anselm had fought, someone had been here among the children, taking another child. two events which did not touch one another. a battle. the reek of an utter stranger. while heda had danced and embraced the return of her sister with delight, no one had watched over gideon.
not even god.
a hateful taste filled her mouth.
not even god.
to whom she had cried. to whom she had devoted herself. to whom she had submitted every aspect of herself to providence. to whom she had committed her worship and her suffering, all of her children, the grave of her husband, the island they had built.
"is nothing enough for you?" heda heard someone, faintly, shouting into the skies. it would take her hours to remember it had been herself, screaming until her throat cut off her voice in raw agony.
heda tore apart the rendezvous in a black rage which blotted all light from herself; branches were torn down, their leaves crushed; she tore bleak swathes in the soft grass until her nails caught, one by one; caught on root and stone and tore, leaving unfelt smears of dripping maroon in dirt until it was churned to tinged mud.
a path crushed through rivenwood to the lagoon, where maddened face stared into frenzied reflection and she heard The Clock ticking as it had never ticked before, until she could taste its twitching hands in her own chest and feel the copper of time in a patina which climbed her tongue.
the impossible image of anselm kidnapping his own son was acceptable. this was not. this was incomprehensible.
"what more can you take?" came heda's loon's sorrow-screaming over the tops of rivenwood trees bending with a summer's-storm, and as warm rain drove down to paint her in washed tones of red to brown-earth gradient, she stumbled back from the rippling water.
heda caught her breath.
god was silent.
god was silent and as spasms raced her strained arms, heda knew she would never reach for him again.