Stone Circle I hate the beach but I stand in California with my toes in the sand

For some moments, she thought herself to be asleep. That was the only way this could be happening to her, Faun didn’t get this sort of thing. That had never been more obvious to her than watching her home burn, watching the pack who had healed her leave her behind, even coming here and feeling as though she was outside of it all.

Her chest tightened so much she felt as though she was breathing through a tube. Or underwater. Or both. She swallowed, leaning into the touch with a small sigh.

She had not seen Drusus in a year. If he hunted her still…she had all of Riverclan. She had Kvarsheim. She had Germanicus’s debt, despite her speak that she did not take debts. Faun had somehow stumbled her way into a family, so far outside of her own that it felt like a dreamland. Perhaps she had died already. Perhaps this whole thing had been a charade of her dying mind.

I.. Faun swallowed, again, her mind working overtime.

Yes, you and I..we do understand each other, don’t we? A force only understood by healers and the patients they turned their gazes on.

I..well. I haven’t ever..truly thought about being a mother. The woman was quiet, for a moment, before she smiled, slow. 

I think I would like to try. My mother..my mother was distant. Never cruel. But she did not care for me or my sisters. Her heart throbbed, the secret she carried branded beneath her tongue, choking her with the reminders of a kingdom long burned to the ground.

I could be better than she ever was.