Broken Antler Fen And I'm so sick of crying, yeah

this was originally set for day of, but adjusting! Bc this makes more sense <3

The first night, Maia had known Ibis should have returned by now.  She knew that it was likely nothing good had happened, but Maia didn't have the space for more.  She couldn't take another loss like that, so while she sensed the quiet worry that suffused the den, she chose to ignore it.  If she didn't have the kids she could have gone to look for her niece, but right now the best thing she could do was take care of the children while others dealt with the rest.

Once upon a time there was a dragon who couldn't quite fly yet.  Her parents promised that someday soon she would, but as all of her friends went to flight training, she had to stay behind.  Instead, she chose to spend her days swimming in the nearby sea.  Her wings might be too small for flight, but she was an excellent swimmer.  She'd even made friends with a few of the bigger fish beneath the waves.

Maia glanced over towards Eljay and smiled, seeing him playing with Sylvie and Hymnal.  Not only was it adorable, but Maia appreciated it a lot.  Five kids was a lot to keep track of, especially with these older ones.  She'd been patient as they asked, endlessly, where Ibis was. But Diantha had started to get a little tricky to deal with as time passed.

Hopefully she could get through this story, though.

After a while, she even started to dread getting her wings, if it meant she couldn't swim anymore.  Her parents always seemed to feel sorry for her but she was happy under the water and didn't really care anymore about flying. Flying was something everyone else did, but swimming was new.

A small cry from Hymnal drew her eyes that way, and she smiled in the pause before continuing.

Her fish friends showed her amazing places, colorful underwater forests and fields of sparkling ocean flowers. Before long she was spending more time below the water than above.

Her parents got angry with her, and one night, they closed her in the cave that they shared. 'Dragons belong in the sky. You'll never learn if you spend all your time in the water.' She pleaded with them and told them she was happier there, but they wouldn't listen. After that night, she wasn't allowed to swim until she'd learned how to fly.

She wasn't sure where she was going with this story, and she found herself growing distracted. Where is your mother? What if she'd hurt herself, or gotten in trouble, or gotten lost? What if...

She lost the story thread entirely. Something about the image of the girl closed in a cave had, somehow, aggravated the worries that she was burying deep. As her pause stretched on and she tried to find it again, she felt an odd tightness in her chest. Panic?

What do you think she did next? she asked. There was no way she'd get an answer; they hadn't been cooperating all that well so far. But she had to try because she was drawing a major, major blank right now, and this feeling of suddenly drowning in her own story was not one she liked.