Fox's Glade She told me that I'm not enough

One moment Olive was napping blissfully in the weak winter sunlight, and the next she was being verbally accosted by her ex-husband.

His sudden, sporadic reappearances no longer surprised her.

This time, however, the man appeared incensed! A beast, stalking about and hunting her! Blinking against his form in the sunlight, the woman picked up her head and did her best train her gaze on him as he walked around her, stiff legged and spitting. He spoke so quickly and so venomously that it was difficult for her to ascertain specifically why he was targeting her and rehashing their entire past needlessly — but the lamb had a sneaking suspicion that it had to do with her introduction to Onyx.

The pale druid also felt safe in assuming that Dakarai was puttin’ on the ritz, and he would not truly hurt or tackle her as he so insinuated. Olive did not even truly take offense to these things, as she truly understood Dakarai’s volatile temper and his tendency to lash out. This was not the first time he had yelled at her — he always regretted it later, this she knew — but Olive also knew that, after this encounter, Dakarai would disappear once more and would stay hidden until he needed something from her, whether that be her love or her healing or her body as punching bag. He was a man who wanted.

Olive pulled her frame from where it lay upon the earth and turned to face her dark knight fully. She swallowed thickly, waited for him to find the end of his tirade, and then responded in a painstakingly slow tone and an eerily calm demeanor. “If you don’t like what was said, maybe you should have been there to change the conversation.” It was this that the mother always came back to, when she was in the depths of her despair and missed the sweet love that Dakarai had so freely proffered. “You didn’t need to be there for me — you needed to be there for your children. I didn’t keep them from you.” Agitated, her finely feathered ears swiveled from the top of her crown to the nape of her skulls; perhaps the only outward indication of the inward frustration she felt. Olive pressed her eyes tightly closed and grit her teeth, trying to mitigate the rising emotions. How many times must she explain this to him?

“The fact is, I raised that child alone. I won’t allow my parenting to be judged — and definitely not by you.”

Olive took a step forward, feeling the inner flames begin to jump in her belly and lick the back of her throat. Her resolve was beginning to wear, as it usually did when awoken from a nap to insults and accusations. “Pray tell, what would you have had me say to your daughter when she sobbed and begged and pleaded every night that you might return to us? Should I have burdened a child with the intricacies of our relationship, or should I have told her the truth: that you left and you did not come back?” Olive’s upper lip gave a kittenish quiver, and she held Dakarai’s gaze with an intensity that was coming to mirror his own. Aries too had disappeared at the same time, which was a burden that also had weighed upon the mother/daughter pair. “Her father was there, and then he wasn’t. If you believe anything else, then you are the one lying — to yourself." The last word was spat at Dakarai’s feet. "You are the maker of your own bed, and though you clearly feel guilty for what you've wrought, you must now lie in it.” Olive lashed her tail and she made to leave. The conversation was over, and nothing productive would come of it.

— but then, Olive stopped in the midst of her exit and peered over her shoulder, thousands of words and insults and pointless things barking in the back of her mind, begging to be uttered by her virginal tongue. Oh, certainly not all was said and done!

The shedevil took a sweeping step back towards Dakarai, calling out to him in a voice that took on an illustrious and noble appearance. “Do you know how many tragedies have befallen me since you left? None. Absolutely none.” It wasn’t a necessary point to make, but Olive wanted to have said it because she wanted Dakarai to hurt as she hurt. The woman wanted her lover to know just how sweet life could be without him; how she could not only survive alone, but thrive! Even her ability to bring life into this world was not contingent upon him, as it once had been. This was her ultimate emancipation.

“I met Onyx,” the woman sneered, narrowing her gaze sharply. “but you must know that already. The sylph stuck out her coal tipped maw, drew in his scent and, lo and behold, found it to intermingle with another’s. Slut, Olive thought vehemently, but was quick to remind herself that Dakarai was no longer hers, that Onyx was not the one who deserved blame, and that Oynx was not the one here who had conceived a fatherless litter. But still, what a whore! “It was not an accident. She sought me out. The girl was in quite a state,” The ash-and-bone sylph tittered maternally. “She seemed truly terrified, and I could empathize. I know how it feels to be so beaten down by the world that you’re frightened of your own shadow.” She knew it far too well.

“Forgive me, but there seemed to be a common denominator in both of our sob stories.” Olive's entire body felt taut and tight, holding energy within her frame so that she could make a quick escape, if needed. “You.”