Emberflame Ridge there's no turning back now

If she had been told of the full plan, now it was lost to history. Her memory had drastically improved as she'd matured and put her mind to use, but as a little girl she'd been pretty mindless. Nothing carried over from one point of her life to the next - nothing except the deep love she held for her family. The loss of the two kids had hit her hard at the time but now Ibis struggled to remember.

And then he was apologizing, and Ibis couldn't figure out why. It hadn't been his fault that Elysium had fallen; if he had been there, or if Eleuthera had returned in time, they'd have been at risk too. It was better that they were away when it happened, Ibis mused to herself. She had come to terms with the loss of Lily as best she could - focused as she was on so many other losses and traumas.

But when he mentioned her mother - both of their mothers - as gone Ibis didn't know how to take it. Her brow furrowed again. She blinked a few times and said, Yes, I know -- they left the willows afterwards. It didn't sink in that the topic of death was the gateway to this shift in the conversation; she was resistant to its suggestion, choosing ignorance rather than truth. I had hoped Okeanos - my brother, if you remember? - I had hoped he'd come this way. I haven't seen him in a while either, and I'm worried.

Yes, run from the possible truth the boy carried. Hide from it, as she hides from so much. She segued the conversation away from their mothers out of a deeply rooted fear; now she focused on Okeanos, unwilling to let herself think of Seabreeze or Olive as truly gone as he had implied. Denial, it was a superpower.