Wapun Meadow learning that i’m deserving of love and the peaceful heart

it's been emotional. thank you for everything. it's been an incredible ride.  i want to close indra's chapter with this song, which i think is perfect for her and her end. it's been an honor to thread with everyone who has ever met my little redleaf. <3  

as indra looked her demon in the eyes, pulled through her burning throat the last haggard gasp which yielded nothing, a new peace came over her.

in her turbulent life, indra had never known peace. peace had been the elusive bird, the white rabbit, the black doe -- all her life she had pursued it, and all her life she had known nothing but cruelty, sorrow, and meanness.

sunfire burned in her throat, but like a distant flare, bloomed and then faded. indra's struggles gradually weakened until she was no more than a frail figure pressed against her son, a mother reduced to a twisted caricature, made into nothing by the life she had labored to bear.

as the last dying light cleared from indra's rueful gaze, there came a new emotion that settled within those amber depths before her lids closed forever. a semblance of tranquility, of acceptance --

quietness --

nothingness.

her life did not flash before her eyes as she expected, while she slumped there on the ground and waited for her soul to leave the body it could no longer inhabit. instead of her life moving past her, indra saw all the figures of importance come swirling into view. they shuffled past like dreary stills, capturing brief moments in time long eclipsed.

she thought of @Laurel, of her love -- her sister. the one thing that had tried to make her whole in this incomplete and imperfect world. indra loved her with her entire heart, and now that heart's song was fading. she thought of laurel's children, of easthollow and valette -- and would laurel be okay? would she find a less sorrowed end then her hapless sister? would she ever look to the blue sky and see indra within it, or feel a stirring of the breeze and know profoundly, that indra was there? even if she was dead, indra swore she would never leave; death would have to pry her bony fingers free.

she thought of @Xan, and the meanness that she used to hold in her heart seemed to fade; was he out there, would he finally make things right, would he know ever how much her life had changed the moment he had stolen within it?

and @Tadec -- sweet, enduring tadec. her first and only love outside of laurel; where had he gone, would he be there waiting, on the other side? would he take her to some idyllic corner of the world where the water was clear and moss grew in bright green sprigs along the blackstone?

indra's eyes closed. she wasn't ready to leave @Marten -- god, she loved him just as much as her own blood. she hoped he would not worry or grow as dark in his heart as his mama had done -- let him do anything but go down that blackened and virtueless path. life would be okay without her there, someday.

and @Nunataq, her proud daughter. indra's heart swelled -- either from the lack of oxygen, or the undying adoration she felt for this strong woman nunataq had become. nunataq, she hoped, had found her friends, her adventure, and her purpose -- and would never look back. she was free of this toxic family, of its crippling lack of self-worth.. wherever she was, indra hoped the world was as kind to nunataq as it was unkind to her.

and lastly, @Merrick -- her troubled son. her magnum opus. even now as his jaws stole the life from within her, indra could not find it in her heart to hate him. indra willed her departure would repair whatever wound she had inadvertently caused her son; he had not deserved it, anymore than she as a child had deserved the departure of her parents. she tried to speak his name, to tell him it was alright and she loved him.

tried, and failed.

these figures all visited her and came to pass. stigmata, casmir, reek, saena, phoenix, reigi, blondine, the black doe -- that god damn black doe that had always eluded her. presently the doe's form simmered like an apparition in her fading vision, which now seemed to swell with blackened swirls that grew ever wider into spiraling black.

indra left this world with a dull smile lingering on her lips -- immune forever to the cold that settled around her.