Noctisardor Bypass jusdreinen

dinah hated them.
in some way, she knew that she did long before they'd even been born. she watched the changes to — heda's body, the way she bloated and fattened and swelled in all the strange, but natural ways. perhaps in another life, she would have been happy — excited, even, to know that she was to be a big sister again. instead, she was faced with a brutal, wretched disgust.
it was wrong. all of this was wrong, wasn't it?
daddy was supposed to be here. she wished he was, desperately; her throat closes as she picks budding herbs from her garden, passes them curtly to her mother while avoiding her eyes. aunt druid, at least, she could tend to without feeling bile bubble in her throat; she could turn off her brain, switch into a sing-song tone as she plays nursing student and tries not to think of the soft, gently aged hazel eyes.
as heda's labor neared, dinah grew more and more distant. snapping, unwittingly, an iciness to the sapphire gaze thick with shards of a resentment that had been building up and spreading like a silent cancer. she watches as her mother buckles and falls into druid's arms and only ogles with a closed-off, swallowed panic thudding through her body.
ava looks to her as heda's grunts turn to shouts and then to mortifying sobs, and all dinah can do is wrap a steely arm around her sister's shoulder, reticent and hardened with a tongue that bleeds from how hard she bites down upon it. the men crowd the dawnleaf, and all the girl wants to do is holler for them to leave. they did not have a place here. they did not know heda. they were not —
and she was strong, she was good, until she heard the name shattering in heda's throat: caracal.
and it was in that moment that dinah knew she hated these children not for their heresy, but their bastardy. they were not caracal's. they were not daddy's and he was not here they were not her brothers he's dead he's DEAD where did he — go
all at once she is transported back to the heavy autumn air and the clouds that danced overhead and the way his skin sat so weirdly upon his bones and she can hear the weeping and see her brothers' horrified faces and little ava with her beautiful rounded eyes and
dinah is still that little girl, and she was so little, so so young and scared and she feels as if the earth is crumbling beneath her feet and her throat and chest and legs hurt in all the same places
when she sees the children for the first time and does not see her daddy in their tiny faces, she feels nothing for them. if allowed, she gathers ava and ushers her to the edge of the bypass walls as fast as she can with not a word to anyone.
because now, ava is all that is left.