Shadewood the sun's blood on my hands [M]

@Cry <3

Love was a tender shell. Life itself was full of rivulets, little dips and curves of a chisel that failed to press hard enough into the stone, afraid of finality - this was something that the empress had learned over time; that no matter what you did or how hard you worked, the world was unpredictable. She could count the stars a billion times, but every few dips of the sun a cloak of shadow would hide away the little pearls of white, and she would be left in her solitude. She could let the light soak warmth into her pelt in the cosiest of embraces, but on other days, it would be rain which drizzled through the silk of her fur, and her skin would tremble with shivers.

One might think that they are prepared for something, but they're not - they're prepared for what they think will occur. Anything could happen to disrupt their plan, and if a plan was unstable, was it really a plan?

Sometimes she thought that maybe she thought too much, and this was her problem; whether her mind spoke truth or fed her lies was a fact she'd never be able to uncover. In recent days, when the only sound was the slow beat of her heart against an ivory chest, she had come to accept this. Gwendolyn Eruna was not a perfect soul, would never be a perfect soul, because perfect didn't exist - not even in those she loved most, and sometimes she wondered if she was the only one which had come to see this as something unchangable in the world. Something engraved into existance, but that led her onto another trail entirely - about how small they all were, how intricate, and confusing, and... 

She was lonely.

Did the stars ever get lonely, even when surrounded by others of the same kind? Did they watch the world with hearts that longed to escape to a new world, watching the earth as she did the sky? Sometimes it made her feel a tiny bit less alone, but when the clouds took them away, she was left in the same spot amongst the trees, shrouded in a canopy of her own confusion. Tonight was a shadowed night, where even the moon failed to escape the tendrils of mist that clung to the world around her - her pregnancy, although admitedly scary, was comforting. The warmth inside her aided in thawing a touch of what lingered from the void, the void that her brain often concocted in a desperate attempt at escape.

There were matters that required her attention, but for now she simply let herself exist, staring at the empty sky and wondering what could possibly lie out there, beyond her reach. The Golden's waist appeared to have swollen with the coming of new life, and the wind whispered promises of hope, but she would not hold them close to her chest. She would not grow too attached to the wishes of peace, because peace was fickle and easily disturbed. Gwen would wait, learn, and continue to grow - she would take back the spirit that had been stolen from her.

Was she strong enough for that?