Ouroboros Spine it beats and finds a way inside

"...You could tell it, in her eyes. See it from the mangled side of her face and her mate whose throat had been torn."

Oh. No. No, no, no. Surely not. A description that felt entirely too personal and too unique. Sakhmet immediately sealed off her features into something unreadable. Whatever warmth or humor had played along her face before had been lost.

It was coincidence. Someone who matched the description of twilight, sun, mangled face. A wonderful, terrible one in a million chance.

It would always be one step forward and ten back.

"Her name was Maegi."

No, thank you. She wished to politely step back to a few moments before, she wished to set this conversation down, she wished to disappear entirely! Because Sakhmet knew she had been that family to be found. Only to have left her own mother! Her siblings!

Silence had settled for far too long between them, she realized belatedly. It had become far too late to play it off.

She felt corned suddenly. The knowledge that Aiolos knew her mother. The knowledge that they had apparently not come to Moonglow and Sakhmet was only left with the shredded tendrils of a possible (re)reunion.

Did she even want that? Did her mother? How long had it been? How awful had Sakhmet been to wander again and again?

When she opened her mouth, there was the soft choke of a breath hitched —

Maegi...Maegi Melonii? And her mate was Mou, wasn't it? Four little ones?