Ankyra Sound [m] but i do it for the kids

settling into the smooth embrace of seal and fawnskin, sobeille closed her eyes and willed this — all of it — away.

there would be no reprieve in this hour; her greatest crucible wasn’t nox or ephraim, but the quiet lives that came after.

perhaps like them wandering in and out of her life, this too was fate — the selfsame emotion that settled enormous within treepie moved sobeille too.

she gasped as another wave rocked through her, slamming her as tides do to kelp upon the sea floor.

treepie and the narrow slant of light afforded by moving from the entrance’s mouth faded from view. another cold wave slapped her, and another — endless and ceaseless and carrying with it a primordial rhythm sobeille had only just begun to hear.

marinette guide me, she urged through clenched teeth as darkening waters welled upon her thigh. 

*  *  *

she would recall none of it besides the bitter pain. the hours would lapse, folded to strange blue memory; not the first nor the last would be remembered, or where their cauls went, who cleaned them, or how the walls seemed to shimmer in synchrony to the climax of her body’s torment. only when the last body was placed carefully alongside its siblings did the energy evaporate from the grotto’s nouvelle mother, and she fell into a deep dreamstate troubled by visions of marinette.