Dragoncrest Cliffs i don't know that my mom loves me anymore

@Antumbra

nomi's return has been permanently marred by the news that mother has turned natrona and taken her sister with her. 

when she was a girl, her mother's absence had weighed her down like stones lining her ribcage. her fierce desire to find her, return her safely to drageda, to blixen, had been the very thing that drove her into training with nomi and eske as a gona. now, though, she can see even her mother's return had been fraught from the beginning -- so much growth had separated them, and then her conflict with furi. blixen wonders: had her mother been so unhappy? is it her fault for not spending more time with her, for being distracted by her duties, for losing bat --

no.

it isn't guilt that weighs her down anymore but anger, righteous and holy. her mother

the natrona

she is young and impetuous and her blood runs hot. she is impatient and cruel, even, despite her best intentions. she cannot love a natrona. she cannot love a mother that has left her not once but twice -- and without even a goodbye! a natrona who has stolen her baby sister from her (she cannot bring herself to think of kiwi as natrona too -- they're still so young). 

still, all this fury cannot take away the facts. bat was lost under her reign. she took mallaidh back in -- her defenses against nomi's judgment are flimsy, made even more so by her other failures. she wants to hide away from it all but she is not a child and the option does not exist, so she squares her shoulders and calls out for nomi by the shores of the lake, her voice strained.