Wheeling Gull Isle it's late, and morning's in no hurry

just before the dawn in The Quiet

Mama, mama, come out and play. . .

It was just before the dawn, and her daughter's voice seemed to echo in this place. The sky was lightening, but it would be hours before the mouth of the cave was bathed in sunlight.

In ordinary circumstances, anyway. These days, it snowed, and snowed, and it seemed it would never cease.

Miseria and Hypnos had never seen snow.

Maegi lay on her side, right cheek pressed against the cold stone, nose hanging over the edge of the rock, above the gently rolling river. It moved enough that it never froze, though it certainly was slower than usual. She watched it idly, eyes following the chunks of ice, the bits of detritus headed toward the ocean.

Come look! Pretty, mama, pretty!

Have you ever felt it—the quickening? Maegi hadn't, truly. . .at least not until this past spring. The moment when she and Mou had well and truly become one, not in flesh but something deeper. The moment where life began and possibility sprung anew.

And she had been a mother before that, true. Had loved and lost, weeped in joy and in sorrow. The babes of pestilence, and the trio given to her by Jaes—yes, they were hers.

But the quickening was new. Miseria and Hypnos were new. And every dawn after that was new, all the way up to the day the forest had burst into flames and the hollow reduced to ashes. Her children reduced to nothing.

Every waking moment since had been old.

Maegi knew pain—loss—emptiness. It was old, old news. Maegi knew this feeling of laying motionless, face pressed against stone, ravaged cheek like an open wound in the open, frigid air—and where it used to sting and burn, it did so no longer.

She had reached such a high threshold for agony that it had ceased to exist. She was empty. She was nothing. Only when she felt the quickening within her would she, and other(s), be reborn—and she had vowed to never bring a child into this world again.

I love you, mama!

A kiss against her muzzle, light as a feather. Tears rolled from her eyes, spilling over, becoming one with the river.