Arrow Lake and over seas to look upon her face

Praimfaya — ‘first fire’, if her uneasy Trig was correct. “A wanheda I would gladly follow,” she snickered, though there was a bit of truth to her words. She soon quieted, for as much as she would join into another geda, Aurëwen wondered if she would ever create a following of her own, rather than continue all of this joining and departing. Which, speaking of...

“We woke up one morning, and he was gone.” The declaration was sudden, and her eyes were as hard and as bright as quartz. “I don’t know where he went, or is. Or why.” A muscle flickered somewhere in her slim jaw, before she pulled the dark veil of lashes over her eyes to shut them, look away. ”Mahler has seen fit to attack him, should he put even a claw past ze borders. I've no idea as to what ze general and his pionier think, but they might favor that verdict, for all I know.”

Her eyes were hooded when she eventually opened them again, and she bit at scarred lips as she so often did when vexed, troubled. Worried, even though she knew nothing would come of it. However foolish it seemed, the optio was firm on her belief that he would return — someday. When, though, and where was an entirely different matter, if it ever came to it.

Her argent brow knit itself, her chin trembled a bit, but she looked to Blodreina with a helpless, breathy smile. ”Ai jos get in dei de... children give us ze chance to be better than we were before they came to this world. And, maybe...” An even more helpless shrug of shoulders, a shake of her fine head. But no matter who from Diaspora stepped into the role of fathering, there would only be one true one which her children would remember.

She would make sure of it — as sure as she saw him in Isilmë’s smile, in Dragomir’s tranquility. ”But today is for you, and your daughter. Not me.”