Hoshor Plains the roots beneath my shaded tree / the moon dancing across my sky

If Olive’s entire body had ever stopped working all at one time, it was at that moment. Frozen, her mossy gaze probed the wolf before her, scanning him for qualities of him that seemed familiar and might reassure her that, yes, this was really happening. But from his burly build to the booming of his voice and all those little intricacies in between, there was nothing of the Aries she loved and nurtured all those months ago. She wasn’t really sure how she had recognized him in the first place, save for a feeling.

Was this really Aries, her little bouncing baby boy? Now a stranger of steel and ash, standing before her and calling her mother. It was a strange sound that rang and reverberated in her ears — could a single word ever be so painful? The sylph wasn’t sure that she could be considered a mother anymore, since all of her children made vagrants of themselves and moved on, without her and on purpose. Is that what mothers did, force their children to flee the nest before they’re ready? Aries had been so young, but he had his father’s resilient spirit even when he was a cub. Maybe there was a part to Aries that she didn’t know [the part of him that rebelled and disrespected his elders], a part of him that was ready to leave — but there was no way she would have ever known, since her son left without a trace.

In her darkest of times — those somber days [weeks, months!] following Dakarai and Aries’s disappearances — Olive found comfort in the thought that her son and her husband had befallen some evil, or taken ill. They were simply indisposed and that is what kept them apart; not their active, daily decision to forsake her, sound of mind and body. It was twisted, she knew, but it was the lesser of the two most awful, gut-wrenching evils, and it gave her a weird sense of hope. She hadn’t held on for naught, it seemed, for here her son was again — and nearly a man! He had cared for himself well.

The fae wondered, what did Aries think of her — did he think of her at all?

Olive was silent, yet so was Aries, and for a while the two sat in a stunned sort of reticence. So many thoughts flitted through her mind that she could not process them, did not know which questions took priority, did not know which were the right things to say. Eventually, the waif took a faltering step towards her son and looked up at him, eyes swimming with all the apologies she could never speak. She felt faint. “Aries…” She breathed, and then realized how long it had been since she last said his name — no one ever asked about her children anymore. With her breath coming in shallow puff-puff-puffs, the woman steadied herself upon trembling limbs. “Are you well?” She asked and swallowed her guilt, all other questions unspoken, because his well-being was all that mattered at that moment. Any scent that may hang upon him went undetected by her.