Hushed Willows I'm arriving, and it feels like I am home.

✹☾❂

 

The boy wilted at her admission that she didn’t remember him — she hadn’t wanted this reaction, but recognition was something you couldn’t fake. If she could have willed his memory into existence, she would have. In fact, she was this close to faking a memory of him entirely to save face, but she didn’t. All she had was some slight recognition in his pale fur and the disappointed looks upon his gentle face. Eleuthera pressed her lips into a thin line, excited to have met another wolf of Elysium, whether she knew them or not. The Seraphs had been scattered to the winds, it seemed, but if they were true, the Willows always called them home — even in the very, bitter end. 

Then Sundance said two things that astonished the lilac girl. In fact, these two assertions from the young, silver thing in front of her left her slack jawed, mouth hanging agape. Shaking earth? Whatever that was, it was new to her. In fact, Eleuthera could not possibly even conceive of what shaking earth was, or how strong of a force it must be to drive a creature from its soul’ home — but it a clue as to what happened to Elysium. The truth of happened to Elysium, after the bear. There was a whole chapter that was blank, and until now, Eleuthera wasn’t sure anyone bore the knowledge to finish the pages.

The second thing that surprised Eleuthera deep, deep in her bones was to hear her mothers’ names. Not only that, but this stranger also referred to them as his mothers. She almost immediately rationalized this as some sort of prophetical title, that they were some holy mother to all the weary and weak, but as the woman silently studied him, Eleuthera felt (also deep, deep in her bones) that wasn’t the mother relationship he was referring to. Okay, she needed to work this out verbally.

“Olive and Seabreeze are my mothers" she responded, somewhat indignantly, albeit unintentionally. She began to consider the timelines, and the relative dating of the gravesites Séamus had found. If the two flighty siblings absconded together when they were a year old, and there had been several months — maybe even edging closer to a year — between then and his discovery of the bodies within the Willows... well, that was more than enough time to rear another litter. “What? When…" the woman mumbled as she took a step forward, then another step, spilling towards the man as her brain figured it all out. Perhaps her conversation with Mali primed her for this realization — that she may have a crop of younger siblings out there, somewhere — but for one to appear right now? Uncanny.

“So, you’re… my brother?"

lumiya gave permission to skip!