Noctisardor Bypass fossopa

whenever! <3

it was high time that she informed @Dinah of the near-future and the siblings that would arrive.
she called for her daughter just outside dawnleaf, and together they made a trail for the giant tree which reached over the entire canopy of rivenwood and whose gnarled roots provided a sort of sloping hollow. not deep enough to den inside without excavation, but a pretty shelter.
snow fell gently beyond the entryway.
"when summer comes, this whole place is covered in moss," she remembered aloud, unsure of how to begin; a smile came for dinah. "how are you settling?"

mama began to seem a bit more like herself again.
it pleased dinah, seeing a spark behind the golden eyes again; hearing her voice more and more often, seeing her settle into the place that was once hers. she was starting to bloom here, wedged between the mountains; but in turn, she left dinah behind.
dinah often felt as if she was in limbo. no longer a girl, but not yet a woman. the grief was not so knife-edged, but the wounds had not yet scabbed. the memories of seafoam and lavender were beginning to blur, but she had not yet touched every corner of the woodstone. she was not herself anymore, but not someone else, either.
she deflects when she's asked about herself, pale eyes averted toward the ground. i'm just glad you and ava are alright, snow crunches beneath her feet, and she notices how her footprints look just like the ones daddy used to leave in the sand. and i'm glad we're not alone anymore.

the evasion went noted and unaddressed — for now. heda knew she must lightly tread where so many ruts had grown now in the spirit. she glanced down toward the marks in the white drifts and sighed gently, deliberately pluming steam into the frozen air.
it curled around her nostrils.
she made a face at dinah, hoping to elicit a laugh, though she would take a smile.
"we aren't alone. we have more now. and i'm glad we came back. i'm glad druid has made this a home." the bypass deserved that, even if mahler had failed those who lived here. 
a pause, birdsong in the white light as the snow's trajectory turned left.
"she is going to have babies, you know. new cousins for you and ava."

a passing grin creeps onto dinah's face, cheeks dimpling. for a small window of time, her cheeks are chubby and her ears do not quite fit atop her head, and she is screeching with high-pitched laughter.
we made it, her shoulders move in a loose shrug, voice ringing with a lackadaisical note. looks like we're gonna survive the winter after all. dinah shoves away the notion that perhaps it had been a gift from god. if it had been, that meant everything else that brought them here had also been his doing, and the idea of that sat cold in her stomach.
oh, more children. a sourness came over the redhawk momentarily. more mouths to feed. more bodies to keep warm. and what she liked least of all was the idea that they will get the childhood she herself had been robbed of. yeah, i, um-- i guess that makes sense. she told me she's been feeling sick lately.
belatedly, she realizes how rude she's coming across as. remind me to congratulate her the next time i see her.

that too, noted, but this time with a little lollop of sickness to accompany the realization. dinah would not be all right with this. what had been done was done; nothing could take it back. but there was little way for heda to explain her choice, and then the one after, for these were not things anyone should know.
the echoes of dinah's laughter was so sweet.
the words rested on the tip of her tongue. she chewed the inside of her cheek. "children is how a pack survives the winter, into spring. into summer, into another year." a pause; she fought the urge to cup her belly, still flat as it was before.
one morning she would wake to a different body, she knew. "this is a happy place to be a mother."

now dinah was getting confused. she chortles that awkward, questioning sort of laugh, smile growing lopsided. it's a little early for me to think about children of my own, if that's what you're asking, mama, as a matter of fact, she hadn't even truly thought about it until now, and the very idea of it frightened her; little things squirming around in her gut, suckling at her nipples like demons. i mean, i don't know. maybe when i'm old.
she would want them to see the ocean anyway, she thinks.
is it? maybe it wasn't the right thing to say, but her suspicion only grows as her mother continues to stall. i mean, i guess it can't be that bad. you grew up here. not like i'd know. maybe it only left a bad taste in her mouth because she chose to see it that way.

dinah — "dinah, i —"
her daughter was meandering through a valley of shadows, and they were all cast by heda's inability to simply be direct.
"you never have to do that unless you want to do it," she assured first, resolution dancing into her eyes and therefore into those of dinah. such a call would come, one day, and it was then that a girl could choose to answer.
heda swallowed, eyelids fluttering "— dinah, i am going to have babies this year. in — a shorter time than it feels like things should take." a breath caught in her throat, choking; she said no more, not wanting to rush on, and instead offered dinah the circlet of her embrace as she prepared for whatever emotion might manifest.

you're pregnant?
it came out as a winded question at first, the girl's jaw falling slack as she repeats it over and over in her mind. what it meant. you're pregnant, when she swallows, it feels like shards of hot glass. oh my gosh.
there were so many things that came to her at once. shock, anger, terror, dread, sympathy, love, and yet none of them boil down to the acceptance that was necessary. her eyes flutter to the curve of her mother's stomach, and she feels as if she might be sick.
the old feelings of bitterness that swam through her head as a babe make a ferocious return. this meant more mouths to feed. more siblings for her to worry for. siblings that were not even her own. and, perhaps most selfishly, this meant that dinah and ava were now to be replaced.
and then came the horrific, thunderous realization that now pounds against her chest — daddy was dead. these are not his children. there was no way.
was this not against everything they once stood for?
had daddy meant that little to her?
had god?
had she?
dinah says nothing else for a long, long time; only stares down at her feet and wishes she could disappear.

"yes," and her breath caught at the shock in dinah's voice, the following rush of a thousand assumptions about how her much-beleaguered eldest daughter might be feeling. 
"it wasn't —" wanted? desired? sought after? "— expected. i —" didn't want it to happen like this
"i didn't — they won't change anything. about us. or our family. i wanted it to be another way, dinah, i did. or not for it to happen at all. but it did. and — they can never be you, or ava," relegating the babes even now in desperation.

immediately mama rushes to quell the worries she surely knew were storming behind dinah's eyes. i wanted it another way, or for it to not happen at all; immediately, the worst of thoughts come to mind. she thought of glaukos, or etienne, or — anselm —
now, her worry turns to an ugly disgust and anger. who was it, mama? did he hurt you? nostrils flaring, heart pounding; i'll kill him. i'll fucking kill him for doing this to you. for-- for, for--
she cannot finish her sentence, relaxed footfalls from moments ago now turned to frantic pacing back and forth. i-i'm not, i'm not-- how are we gonna do this? after we barely even survived the last season? after-- what about my brothers? there was no malice in her tone, even through the sharpness of her words; only hurt. a blazing, blue-black hurt that now felt as if it were etched into her skin. h-how can you say it won't change our family when we don't even have one anymore? and don't even say it'll just be different, or new, because i don't want a new one. i just-- i want our old one back.
she would not cry. she would not.
they won't even know daddy.

how could heda explain that these children were the price of an entry she had never faced without caracal? there was no comprehensible way for her to explain that she and anselm had come together in mutual loathing to create life she must again cover with glaukos.
no way to explain how sullied and stained she felt.
"dinah," she said softly, watching her girl, her proud, beautiful girl stalk back and forth in a furor of emotion, "i asked so much of you last year. and this year. but this year, the rest of it, we're not alone. we don't have to go anywhere. i don't need to rely on you so often."
she did not say who, her teeth locking around that, prepared to lie her way out of mentioning either the mountain wolf or the hollow man. "john has gone to find your brothers. when he comes back, when i can travel again, i will go too."
numbness, creeping; "we can't have our old one back, dinah. i won't pretend all of this is ideal. but you have me. you'll always have me. and you have ava, and now both of you have druid." and if dinah could never see these new babes as her siblings, at least she could cling to the blood and the sister she did recognize.
tears of shame softly fell in silence at the burning mention of caracal's name.

what, so you won't need me anymore? dinah spits back, rejection hot and bubbling on her tongue. where does all of this leave me? do you even know what you've done?
she didn't know what was worse. the fact that her parents' marriage was now ruined and defiled in the eyes of a god she once loved, that she would have to help raise such bastard spawn, or the idea that she wouldn't have to — that mama would not rely on her.
what else did she have beyond that? beyond her façade of being the eldest, of being daddy's last legacy, of being the glue that held her branch of the tree together?
she watches the stream of tears burn her mother's hollowed face, and yet she cannot bring herself to reach out and wipe them.

all was shifting sideways again, and heda felt the grounding weight of the babes in her belly as it was — something to tie her to the earth so she did not float away. there was — there was no way to explain this to dinah, that choosing —
no!
no no no no no no —
the exhale wavered in her throat, on her lips; the tears soon slowed to a trickle and then dried; she wiped her face, feeling their stains upon her wrists, the warmth a sickening ooze which turned her stomach into flopping weakness.
"i need you, dinah, as a sister. not as a — not what i made you be to us before. but i do need you," heda managed, meeting the angered eyes of her daughter.
i don't love them the way i love you. i never will.
heda wondered where upon the flight from the island her heart had turned to so much shadow.

as a sister. as a sister? dinah shrieks, a languid pain surging through her chest and clinging to her ribs. to who? to them? or to you?
the thought of leaving rivenwood altogether crosses her mind in a moment of blinding anguish. she could; she could leave, forge a new life — rid herself of the pain and retire at a young age. change her name or sink herself fully into the one she'd been born with, find those of generations past who had been lost to the sands of grief and panic.
but as she looks into the glazed eyes of her mother, frightened and vulnerable in a way she'd never quite seen before, stares at the curve in her nose and the texture of her fur that matches her own, there comes a sinking realization that no teenager wants to come to —
they are all that is left of each other. there is no dinah without heda; there is no heda without dinah.
she blinks away the bitter cold that clings to her lashes, squeezing out a hushed breath. we'll figure it out.
as they always did.

the resignation that filled dinah's voice was far too aged, far too bitter, for so young a face. oh; her face; whenever heda looked now not down into the features of her island sunshine, but directly into those eyes — she saw caracal.
and there was no way that dinah did not also see it every time she glimpsed herself in the lagoon or rivenwood's many streams — "to them. to them," a stabbing sensation lodging under her breastbone an early, false contraction if she had to guess at all.
the outburst had shaken the trees, and the pillars of heda's life felt once more tremulous and unsteady.
"we'll figure it out." a mantra, talismanic and thrumming like a vein along the outside of a stressed brow.

will they have our last name?
dinah wasn't even quite sure why she asked; she regrets it as soon as it comes out, face softening and then curdling into something painfully disgusted. or will they-- did mama even know the surname of the man who had defiled her?
did she know his first?
these were disgusting, ugly thoughts to think about anyone, much less one's own mother, and yet here she was, branding her a whore. a whore, and yet it was not her fault. unless it was. was it?
dinah did not even want to be thinking this, to be following the laws of a god she no longer held love in her heart for. a truly loving god would not have done this to her, done this to her mother — done this to anyone. and yet there was still that intrinsic fear, that devastating, crawling fear that in death, she would be banished to a fiery eternal damnation.
she did not want to be dragged down with her, if that was so; but what other choice was there?
she feels helpless as her pacing comes to a grinding halt, tip of billowing tail twitching ever so slightly like a disgruntled feline. and then comes her next question, hoarse and scratchy in her throat: when was the last time you prayed, mom?

"i'd — i'd like that, dinah, but only if you want that." heda could not force sisterhood on the older girl, no matter how much she thought a touch of unity between them all might help soothe so very, very much.
"i'm still a redhawk, you know," the mother murmured aloud, thinking. considering. "i've never given that up." she'd been a widow from the coast to the mountains and then — the loneliness had weakened her, she supposed. never again. not again.
prayer — "i pray all the time, sweet girl," heda breathed out, meeting the impassioned eyes of the child who had borne the weight of an entire family upon herself.
an exhale; "do you want to pray with me, dinah?"

fade? <3

no.
it was harsh, the way she said it, and while regret normally would have come in a brutal wave immediately after, instead, she doubles down. you and i are redhawks. they are not and will never be. not unless dinah had a secret uncle somewhere that her mother had gone and — no, no, that was horrible!
but then again, all of this was.
her name and her face were the only pieces of her father that she had left, and so she would take them down with her. the sapphire eyes harden into ice cold stone. no, she says again, this time with a note of apprehension; i don't think he's listening.
she chews at the inside of her cheek as she begins to turn around. i think i want to be alone for a while, mom. i need to-- process this, or whatever. to think, to think; she needed to think.
she leaves her mother waiting without even so much as a glance back to check if she follows.