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

He was well, the boy said! Those words made the sylph feel simultaneously relieved and contrite, for now her mind understood what her gut had known to be true. Olive oppugned against her new truth [a reality that, before this moment, had only been a theory]: Aries did not leave because he had gotten lost or injured, but because he just didn’t want to be with her. He must hate you, the words pounded in the back of her skull, giving her a headache. He hates you.

Was she jumping to conclusions? Maybe. Probably. Unfortunately that was just how Olive worked — she experienced emotions dynamically and sadness was an all-consuming experience for her. When feelings struck, they struck hard and Olive sometimes had to create her own narratives in order to cope with the disorienting weight of it all. Sometimes, when in the depths of her depression, the pale wraith wondered if that was the reason she believed in the gods at all… as a coping mechanism, and nothing more. Weren’t the gods nothing more than narratives anyways?

“I'm better, now” she lied.

Aries stood merely a few feet in front of her, but remained a million miles away in both mind and body. His words were blunt, his gaze severe; he was inaccessible to her, and the discomfort was pervasive. Unable to quell the upwelling of emotions, Olive bit her lip and dropped her swimming, jade gaze to the ground in front of her — the lamb was unsure how to hide her tears from her son. Her breath trembled as a newborn fawn,  but Olive pushed through and after a few moments regaining enough composure to look up at Aries, the only son that she had ever raised, and asked him the question that plagued her.

“What happened, baby?”

Suddenly she felt so laid bare, so vulnerable in front of her own kin, and could not stand one more second of this. Was this not Aries, her charismatic cub, and was she not his mother, the one who birthed him under the light of the full moon? Would she not move rivers and mountains to make his life even remotely better? Were there no liberties she could take of him? Did that familial love earn her nothing?

Olive swept towards Aries, drifting closer and looking up at the boy as she did so [he was so very tall and so sturdy, not unlike his father], seeking to act upon one of those liberties — nay, needs! If he allowed her, the lamb would breech the barrier of touch and come to tuck her nose amongst the fur of his collar bone, wrapping him in a feline embrace. She edged closer to him, breathing into the nape of his neck. “I thought you had died…” She whispered fearfully, a chill raking across her hackles and snaking down her spine.  His scent was thick and sweet with death — somewhere deep in her psyche, the scent registered with her [it was a scent she could never forget, after all] — but at that moment, Olive focused entirely on the boy with whom she shared her embrace. She would probe this subtle recognition later on, but she simply refused to think about that now. Her attentions were better suited elsewhere.