Ankyra Sound then, a vision came to me — when you came along

ooo THANKA for joining!

each step she took, her heart hammered a rhythm anew. it was too close — tantalus must have felt this way trying to sup water to his wretched mouth — and yet, she had traveled so many miles it hardly seemed real that she was here, standing before the monstrous entrance to her hallowed home. 

the entrance to her heart, even. 

her crew, if it could even be called that, was forgotten as she peered into that unfathomable black. she almost dared not enter - as if some dark order lingered beyond her sight, forbidding her from embracing the cold comforts of her old home. 

she hung the balance when a figure appeared, lean with youth but not all together a child. she measured the boy with a quick gaze; svalinn’s age, maybe. 

too old to kidnap. not that the siren queen would ever love a child again. her heart belonged only to her two (known to her) surviving children - raleska and svalinn. no other could possibly breach the thorny walls of her savage heart.. not ever again. 

her mind had been made. he could follow her — or ignore her as she had done to him. in this moment she cared only for the song deep in the grottos hearth, that rung in her ears like some siren’s perilous croon. 

in sure steps that disguised her heightened adrenaline, caiaphas reunited with the black shadows of the grotto. slipping under the smooth arch of ancient gneiss, the sylph felt as if she were a cavernous hollow, and the grotto the black liquid that filled her to the brim.

bit by bit the emptiness within her dissipated; bit by trickling bit, something in her was forged anew.