Sunbeam Lair & so it stood, bitter-sweet, still fair to see, but stricken, soon to fall and die?

Dated 6/23.

Exile was best coined with endless dishonor, or held with an abysmal shame. But Aurëwen only felt such euphoric resolve in her breast; her heart feathering about with an easement she hadn’t felt in moons. 

She’d drawn both of her sun-and-stars to the Lair beneath a guise of foraging; but now she knelt before them both, once-lovely countenance both solmen and earnest. “Oh, jewels of my life...” Aure wasn’t the heartless sort to simply wish away her children’s love for the mountain lake and those there. But she told them the truth, all the same:

“I have not had a love for Diaspora since your nontu chose to leave — and even less so, when he left once more.” A flicker of silence, then, “I challenged for ze General’s place, for I do not share in his ...vision,” the word was low, bit out, before her voice tendered with reasoning once more, “yet, I lost to him. And now we must leave.” And she would never regret what she’d just imposed, however foolishly— 

She hadn’t lost; not really. The only thing that had been lost were three thriving souls from Diaspora. They never were theirs to begin with. There were other things to dwell on, better saved for later rumination, but ...that was the only thing she could find a bit of triumph in — that its leader would away with even lesser paws that’d first come to him.

Aure whet her scarred lips, argent half-sight peering into @Dragomir’s hazel. “We must seek your father out, wherever he may be.” Dark lashes rested, weighted by a flourish of despondency — but then she meet her son’s eyes once more. “But, my loves, wherever our home comes to be ...ze sea or no, ze hinters or no ...it will not be home if we remain so apart. Do you understand, my loves?”