Northstar Vale the tones of your flesh i tempered with pandyssian chalk

“I left my cubs for this,”
Bracing, for not all had been as forgiving as the composer:  “all begun when first I met ze Hydra of ze Moonspire ... and was tasked with leaving ze riverlands and tutoring her own children. It was only on ze evening of my departure, when I was stricken—”  energy crackled, shivered across the heavens. A pale lancet, hefted in the almighty hands of heaven and with a heave the frozen flame of energy was thrown from high  “—when I had slept with what felt as for-ever, that I awoke not as Aurëwen, but Andraste, and for all that I do not believe in superstitions, I ... knew that I could not return to those I had once birthed, as I once truly meant to. For that, I banished myself from motherhood.”  Not when she had gone forth from her children in so many instances; but that had been because the sire of her firsts had not been entirely present in those early days of their lives, and so the mother had wandered; so unsettled, so unprepared. So unsuitable, then.

After several moments and a shivery sigh, Undómiel continues, then: tells the warlord of her then-love for the Diasporan lord who had so tended to her; of her meet with proclaimed queen of lune-lopers who had so suggested that the fée inhabit these sky-spearing spires to be ever nearer to him  —  and of how such became necessity when the ghouls of the eventreaders had crowded them from that misted Weald, how her brood now roots amongst the very ideals she had endeavored to keep them from. And how, finally, the tale wove into the musiker’s most recent proposition of forging accord through his own sowing:  “Tonight, I withdrew myself from ze terms he asked of me. That is why sleep has not taken me.”

It is here that the fairylight quiets; the saltglint of before now burbling into glistening and argent halfsights.  Astarte, Astarte  —  knew now that she could not undo the very names that had been so rooted within her now-broke heart  (knew that the musiker may very well damn her for it)  but her word on whelps was her own, this time; not guided by lusftul diversions, or sworn sweetnothings, or the spite that he seemed to think she was so capable of ever attaining.

No; if a daughter would she bear, then she would be named as such, just as self-promised.

“I first agreed, for I so foolishly believed that our children would not be of mere contract; that he would cherish them, well and truly, and covet them evermore than those others he had whelped. But, now ... I cannot again repeat such history  —  if I am to again mother, I will not allow myself to quicken under false pretenses and untruths,”  Andraste gives, hopelessly, finally;
wearing now an anguish that seems to be of heavy-lashed resignation; wilting with the weight of it all. Such a wish for love, for a daughter named thereafter, was ambitious, absurd.

But she has been utterly dismantled, and thinks that her wishes are rather overdue for an answer.