Arrow Lake ❝—by my blood & bone.❞ (lbr.)

It was water, not winter, that froze the fever of her dreams. She tread beneath the spires of Rhaesuial once more, without purpose for where she roam.

What did the water give me?

She was never meant to look behind her; never meant to return to how her soul bled. If she looked back, she would be forever lost. Ahead of her was some faraway, salted hearth. She tread with purpose, now, and her frail paws left snow-smattered prints on obsidian.

What did the water give me?

She was dazed, she was dazzled at the shriek of sunlight on Drageda's sea. She found herself whispering not of her Eä, but of Home; so Vercingetorix arrived, as evening tends to do. And he cradled her in those arms-of-eve, how the night of him is meant to, and made such love to her in a luminous cave, their blood forever murmuring anothers’ names.

... did the water give me?

The face of her father-king was misery enlivened, and Kiomaralis stood before her, fury come to life, and she was screaming screaming screaming, ever-ruinous. Vonnaruil was fading from her, not for the first time; even as red, wrathful red, daubbed his lips, his throat, his breast.

... did the water give ...

That faraway hearth was so very far-away, and the her haven's death shivered at her spine. So she ran from the dark frost of that desolation, because she was never meant to look back. Could not.

... the water give ...

She could feel a flame that shivered so cold that it burned within her womb, and had felt so for what seemed like a century. Felt it, how the heavens feel eons; how she felt the blood of all those ancients wreathing through her. Those beholders were silver, luminously star-silver, with eyes even silver still, entreating her to run and run and run. The blood of Them would rivel the veins of her children her children her children, of eve, of gleam — and another babe spilt from her,

... the water ...

And Aure saw the place of her drowned innocence, where the sun shrieked as bright as she remembered. Her brother's voice wisped, ever so faint, glimmering red. Aure crept to where the Dread Wolf once cleft red scripture. He turned to her. The face within was her own.

That ancient frost made itself known in her lungs, gobbling at all of her. Took the fever; took everything from within her. Then, listless within her own dark, she only knew the whispering of her stars.

---

Once she'd roused from delirium, she woke to everything of the world dimmed by springtime shadow. The morning frost in the heaths melted earlier and earlier, now thawing as the splay of the sun’s pale fingers pressed against the the Sunspire's peaks. But the world itself was still heady, still suspended in hushed gloam, and the scent of healing was all around her.

She remembered her male of evening and his eyes of sea, and didn't know his name in this moment, but whimpered for Verx all the same; her heart thrummed a staccato of drag-o-stea drag-o-stea drag-o-stea. Tearful with an unforgiving bleariness, Aure shied from the sound of her own breathing, shivery and softened and raw as a wound.

There was a deep ache between her thighs, but she was able to blink through them; trembling incessantly as she began to bathe her children, coax and usher them to suckle. She fell into the kindness that Olive and Mahler provided without hesitation, tears of fatigue and utter devotion whetting the red of her cheeks.

The waters had given her a promise, and the tug of sweet mouths at her belly was there; the sonority of suckling was with it, and she knew what she had birthed. They were Verx's, and hers, by blood and bone. Her throat was so strained, aching, wisping: "Dr.. Dra...gomir," their creations thrumming at her belly, as she kissed the dark and light brows, "Isi-..ilmë—"