Dawnlark Plains caught in your riptide

exit ano!

it's complicated, he'd said. and wasn't that always how it was?
her eyes hold him long and hard, as if the silence might name all the things they could not. but in it, she saw not just the child she'd nursed beneath frost-heavy boughs, but the man he had become.
carved by storms with night in his bones. 
how she'd prayed to see him again, dreamt of this very moment—but not like this.
not with him standing like a wall between her wrath and a man not worth the dirt he’d die in.
but she saw it. like a sliver of light flashing between storm clouds. he was protecting him.
then she saw herself, when she was young, defiant, and foolish. shielding a man who had squandered every ounce of grace given.
but whatever her son chooses to do—it matters not her opinion. 
her breath hisses through her teeth as she draws breath. she lets it fill her lungs with needling wind before finally lifting her weight and stepping away. the male chokes once, dragging in air like it was the first he'd tasted. she did not look at him.
her eyes belonged to her son, then.
she'd killed for less and she'd do it again. but she would not raise tooth nor claw against her son's will. at least, not today.
"keep your runt." the words are pointed, but devoid of any real venom, "if you feel he’s worth the space he takes."
she turns, steps slow but not uncertain.
"you offer meat,” she says over her shoulder, "but i find i am not so hungry."
a beat passes.
"find me in the valley when you are done here." she does not elaborate beyond that before disappearing beyond the outcrops.