Deepwood Weald and if you don't know, now you know

Last from me.

How this moment ridiculed her!
and how she condescended to let it cascade upon her shoulders; features settling into solemn vigilance, inscrutability entire as he named her shepherd and self-righteous bitch — and yet, there had been no preaching to her tones. There had been no fevered gleam perched within her gaze; only the dimming cloak of one who has only found sense in supposed nonsense. This errant male before her was no better than she: unknowable.

Vercingetorix had never understood her—
she had lain upon her belly and let him in because she thought she had loved him. She had given him her support for his raid upon Rusalka  — the shores that had almost killed him —  because she thought she had loved him. She had stood against Stigmata and had whisked her children over sun and spire, all because she thought she had loved him; she had forgiven his dual departure, all because she had told herself she was in love with him. Him!— he who, last they had spoken had, quite plainly, told her to give up on him.

And now she would.
She would away from him, fleet, before he would see the glistering of her eyes and know it for what it was; before she threaded her sights back upon him and intoned, hushed,  “You should have never had mine.”  The specter of a smile that was more fang than favor; the words featherlight, unfraying. There was the assumption that she would never again see him — and perhaps it was all for the better. He and his children would never again have such an unhinged, unforgiving, ungrounded mother in their lives; a mother who had only ever meant well, yet hadn’t ever truly been able to convey that to the family she had been apart of.

Let them hate, then.

When the weald’s shade billowed down upon her once more, she invited Agana to her side, as to all those others who had gathered to inspect the commotion; drew away those who had readied themselves to surge to her; act as shield; he did not deserve it.

All hail Her Satanic Majesty, or whatever.