Ankyra Sound a bruise upon the silent moon

The howl erupted from the beach where he knew the women camped. He had anticipated this moment — the entirety of Rusalka had — and Firefly imagined all the feelings he'd experience leading up to meeting the children he had helped to create; the imagined awe, the fear of becoming a parent, the utter terror in regard to Rosalyn and Erzulie as they struggled. He stopped what he was doing and looked to the sea, expecting emotion to hit him like the undulating tide, but there was... Nothing. An emptiness. A void that surprised him more than the panic in the fading call.

He took his time to reach them. Each moment that passed felt longer than the last, each stride heavier. He got partway there and spied the dark-capped figure of Caiaphas attending — and that's when it all hit home for him. Rosalyn had protested against his involvement and did not want him there. Erzulie was the one he coveted and by proxy, the children she brought earth-side. However, the longer he sat there and the more he absorbed, the more Firefly came to fear his own involvement. He thought of the fight between himself and Rosalyn — of her shedding of her rank, the words he threw at her so vehemently — but he knew it had been something else, something displaced.

They were struggling and birthing these children while the father stood frozen, realizing that it was his own fear that had grown in to an insurmountable obstacle.

He turned, and he ran.