Firefly Glen yomblod

timeline flexible! <3

power returned in tiny stages to skaigona's thinned body. her legs did not quake so much, but the fatigue was never-ending and downed her for several hours at a time.
birds flocked in feathered flock within the oaks overhead. faded gold of once-harsh eyes watched them in idle repose. sunlight felt wondrous over her belly and upturned shoulder, persuading the woman to close her eyes and relax. there was nothing else for her to do but surrender.
her children's faces filled her mind, each etched in a hard look. the children she and druid had raised; the ones left behind; they too attended her thoughts, and beneath the gilt glow skaigona found those thorns of guilt in her spirit once more.

Anselm told himself it was good to be here; for Gideon, and for Ezra. They deserved a whole family, not a fractured one.

Easy enough to say, but hard to do - especially as he saw Heda outlined in a halo of gold, eyes closed and resting.

She did not look at peace; she looked skinny and miserable and exhausted. Part of Anselm felt a bitter sense of schadenfreude; but a bigger part of him shamefully chased away that savage thought, chiding himself for being so petty.

So, tell us how the first thing out of his mouth was almost 'You look like shit.' A memory of her reproachful gaze -- on many occasions earned -- swam to the surface and clunked his mouth shut.

Instead, he pawed at the ground and sucked in a good breath. Heda. Gideon is safe.

no correction of her newly chosen name came for anselm. slight shoulders tensed to hear the roll of his voice, and then she let go the tautness from her muscles. it was good to hear him, better than she had expected to feel when last they met again.
impossible to turn now, to squander the sensation of benevolence experienced now perhaps for the last time on behalf of the father to her sons.
"good." her voice shook slightly; vision blurring as she pictured the face of her sweet baby boy, how beautiful his voice was, how —
how if she had been there, he wouldn't have gotten hurt. "he's not — no one hurt him?" head dropping behind sharp shoulders as skaigona fought a sob so fiercely her breath almost stopped.
"ezra is here. take him with you, anselm."
how warm the sun!
how empty her spirit.
"it'll be good for him to see gideon. and it's good that you're back." at last she turned her eyes on him, seeing the new marks, the ways in which he had changed since their final days in rivenwood. "what did — what happened?"
skaigona would not pretend that anselm had been her focal point in anything since dragging ezra out of noctisardor. but as she watched him now and felt the bleak press of misery that they were not intended to be more than what had passed.

They fought for so long that seeing Heda like this brought a wellspring forth in Anselm. Of confusion. Anger. Frustration. And finally, could that last estranged emotion be sympathy?

Why was she like this? Lying down like she prepared for her cask. Anselm jolted to hear her echo the very same words as Ezra; words he would not wish, for it meant he would be pulling his sons from their mother.

Take them vith me? Anselm repeated, marveling how he'd been offered the very thing he felt he deserved, and somehow it was utterly untenable to him.

Again, on behalf of his sons. Anselm knew there was an uglier emotion under there directing part of his motives.

Amadeo. Your -- He almost said lover. Refrain was all he had now, other than a sorry sense of bitterness. Could she feel it?

Vhy? Are they not good enough for you? Or is Amadeo forcing you to do this, so you can have his sons instead? Out before he could help it -- and far more cruelly coded than she deserved.

hurt in his words. skaigona wanted to be enraged by them, to turn with a snap, with vitality ferocious in her blood once more. and for a moment there was indeed a flicker of anger in her eyes, a revitalized pain which faded as if she had not the strength to raise its ember.
"i don't know where he is, anselm. i took ezra and i left."
off she stared, unseeing now as the buttery golden light gilded the autumn trees, her own nape, anselm's angered eyes;
"i left that day because i'd asked amadeo to be leader and you were there. i found druid out there. she — i wanted her to come home. she was weak and — but she didn't seem sick. she'd stayed in that forest. i thought it was safe."
memories crested the battered hillock of her mind, slicing across ragged turf with the agony of a rusted blade.
"when i came home, amadeo was covered in blood. he'd said you'd fought. i didn't — i didn't have time to even think about that because someone, someone;"
she lost the fight there, clinging only to the dignity of her turned back as she sobbed out that moment of terror; "someone had taken gideon. i looked and i looked and amadeo — disappeared. i called everyone together, i said we had to go after you and him."
she shut her eyes and birdsong for an achingly long moment filled the space where her voice had been.
"druid attacked me. she bit me, anselm. i grabbed ezra and i left. i left al-all druid's kids. i left her. i left my sister. i just —"
a light, dizzied laugh. "ezra and i found swiftcurrent creek. and etienne found us. rightfully he hates me. but he told us where to find you and gideon, and we came here."
wrist raised to wipe her tears, her mouth. "i've been sick since we arrived. and worsening. so no, anselm. i'm asking you to take ezra so he doesn't have to watch me die."

Ezra had said this, all along. He'd warned Anselm that his mother was sick. Anselm refused to see it, even when the evidence was right there. Where was the fire? The stirring ember of resentment?! He was tempted to keep kicking her while she was down until that merciful flame became a phoenix reborn; to fight, god damn you.

He could only listen in growing horror as she laid there and painted out the picture of what truly happened; a reality so very different from the mental picture he'd comprised in his head. Heda, the monster mother. Heda, the selfish whore. Heda, the unthinking weakwilled woman who never bothered to search for Anselm.

Now the pieces fit into place, revealing a picture so ugly Anselm wished his false narrative was real instead.

There was no joy in learning Amadedo was gone on the heels of Heda -- now Skaigona -- admitting one fatal thing.

She bit you. Anselm blanched. The birdsong between them seemed loud and unfathomably coarse; like laughter at a funeral.

You mean to leave us. And he could not help the break in his voice as his whole world began to crumble, taking on the singular spectral vision of Heda laid there like a corpse at dawn.

us? us! how many times did i beg you to love me? how many times did you turn your back? us!
but nothing mattered. her anger didn't matter. his sorrow didn't matter. even the utterance of the one thing she had ever wanted from anselm, some show of unified understanding, some sort of care — even that at last given to her was a bitter mote.
offered too late. eaten too late. 
did he think this was her choice?
of course he didn't. 
the break in his voice; the crack in his words; skaigona could not help the way she reacted to it, how her own tears came again and she tilted her head toward the warm skies, existing beneath the dome of sunny pleasure even as her own soul crumbled inside herself.
"love them. just love them as much as you have, anselm. just keep doing that."
us. she might take that with her.
"don't let them wonder. don't let them wait for me. tell them." it was one mercy done for her in the years of praimfaya, no staring at the horizon in wait for a mother who would never come back.
shoulders trembling, skaigona begged silently for him to walk away, to say no more, to present no fight to what had been and what would be.
i love you so much, sent out of her body on an exhale of breath which stilled the tremor and quieted for now her own grief.

Wrestling with the unthinkable, Anselm's brow knot in distress. Was this to be life's bitter irony? That their moment of reconciliation was forever robbed from them both? Now, in what he could only see was her dying hour, he could not hold her or comfort her.

There was nothing to stop the anguished tears that sprung from his stinging eyes as he saw her own face dampened. His earlier thoughts of pettiness were replaced with thorny shame: she had looked like shit because of --

Anselm's thoughts turned to his boys abruptly. He could not allow words such as 'death' or 'rabies' to habituate the space within his thoughts: doing so would manifest a reality that he was not ready to embrace.

Suddenly he felt like a little boy again; his own boys -- were they to be without a mother now? His throat bobbed and he inhaled several raw, shaky breaths. She couldn't do this to them.

How could she?

He knew she was powerless. He wanted to slam his fists against anything; delete the hundred days leading up to this moment. To grab her and shake her until warmth and life sparked back into Heda's veins. She was just giving up - giving up on her boys and giving up on him.

Again came the needling thought: she is powerless to this, he reminded himself. That she was so listless should have been his first dose of reality that this was well and beyond Heda's control to navigate.

They vill vant to see you. He managed in a blubbery sob altogether unmanlike.

Verklempt beyond words, Anselm grew stonily silent.

but anselm did not leave, and skaigona broke further. "don't you think i know that," she asked in a small cry, unable to muster the frustration her words might convey. turning, she allowed anselm to take in the full withering of herself, only her eyes shining like coins in a gutter.
"do you think i want to just disappear, anselm? of course they'd want to see me. i want to see them!" skaigona hiccuped, her last strings of control cut by his insistence that they continue to belabor this agony.
"i want to see gideon. but do you think it's good for him to see me like this? why shouldn't he remember me the way i remember him?"
was she the selfish one? was she the one robbing ezra and gideon of something they needed. "i can't travel. not unless," another pained laugh. not unless she was dragged. carried. 
suppose she died on the way? effort for nothing; no. no.
she'd done enough. she'd taken enough. couldn't this be a gift for her sons?
"what if i lose it, anselm? what if i — what if i hurt one of them? or you? druid — didn't even know what she was doing."
her skin ached with the starvation of touch. "etienne told us that this — it's only passed through bites. sometimes it lives inside you. sometimes you never get ill. but i won't take the chance. i won't. i can't."
desperate, now she was up, but she did not dare approach; she could not bear him turning away from her outstretched hand again in the eleventh hour.

All this unspooling of emotions, of his hopes, of their future -- severed Anselm cold.

And Heda - he could not profess to imagine how she felt, carrying this ugly truth in her heart. He stayed the impulse to reach for her as she rose shakily - it would be entirely human of him to want to help her up, but his own deeply undying sense of self-preservation stopped him cold.

And the realization that he'd executed such an unfeeling decision unconsciously caused him to pause and share a wide-eyed look with Heda. She would know, she would see it, and it would likely hurt her further.

Was that not the final shape of their relationship anyway? Fumbling blindly over unseen scars, reopening them again and again --

Do you think I just want to disappear, Anselm? Of course he knew the answer to that. He worked a reply in his unwilling throat that never met the life of day. There was nothing that he could say to undo or change any of this. Her questions went unanswered, for Anselm could not summon the strength needed to break through his wall of tears to speak.

 But do you think it's good for him to see me like this?

His sense of fatherhood warred with pragmatism. His sons would feel robbed of being by their mother until her last breath: as a child, he would want to stay. But pragmatism was an unfeeling kind of intuition, and it forbade him to risk his son's lives for their own closure.

Are you certain this is vhat it is..? Disbelief still hung in cowls around him, even though he knew it was foolish to think anything other than this very real horror -- this very real nightmare -- was systematically undoing the very concept of Heda and her life as they spoke.

he wept and her own tears continued. why did he cry? maybe it was for gideon and ezra; she was sobbing softly for them too, for their hurt and their confusion, for the wounds that would be left in them after losing their home and their family.
but they had a chance to have another. both boys had a father and a brother. pain was unavoidable; rebuilding was the legacy she wanted to pass down to them.
"i don't know. just that the sickness can be slow and then your mind goes. it could be a virus. something that will pass. but i don't think so, anselm."
she shut her eyes at his unerring refusal to come close to her; it mirrored too harshly the first days of their initial contact. and it was good — that he meant to keep himself from her sickness meant he would safeguard their sons as well.
but maybe there was something more, maybe, something else he could give her.
us. was she selfish to hold that bittersweet bauble so close to her heart?
there was understanding in her that despite his tearstained struggle, anselm would bring ezra to a safe place. to gideon. her eyes then were filled with gratitude, and then she let the derelict dam within her heart break. "do you think we ever could have —" but there was no way to finish that sentence. the love in her eyes beseeched him a final time to speak truly.

This was unfair.

And yet, unfairness had only ever been both their lot. Anselm fidgeted internally, his tear-swept face dark with emotions too conflicting to name.

She shut her eyes and it was all he could do to not reach for her; though they had only ever seemed to be ships passing in the night, and their interactions only ever strained -- as if they were two beasts of two separate magnetic poles -- Anselm had never wanted this for her.

Maybe Etienne could...? Could what? Magically heal her? He recalled with painstaking clarity what Etienne's opinion of the disease happened to be.

How he had given Druid...

This was not the fate his children's mother deserved.

His sorrowed expression lifted, but only furrowed deeper again once he reconstituted the words she'd managed to bring to life, both said and unsaid. Truthfully, he didn't know. There was something wrong with him -- something so deeply corrupt that it sucked others into its greedy orbit, darkening their spirits with its ugly malaise.

And she was just a product of this, now.

He swallowed the gut-wrenching thought that came to him. It was his fault she was sick. His fault Ezra and Gideon's mother was dying. If he had just put away his stupid sense of pride and dragged himself back to Rivenwood -- but no! He'd been too hurt, too furious, too bitterly angry to do what he ought to have done.

And he knew it.

I -- I don't know. He wanted to say so much more, but the words were scraping against his raw throat, unwilling to be knocked loose from their tangle. I'm sorry. For everything. I vish --

He looked to the ground to mask the welling tears breaking ground over his face. I vish you had never met me. You vould be safe. Happy.

And though he didn't say it, most importantly -- alive.

"i don't regret you, anselm," skaigona exhaled, and it was the truth, trembling in the set of her mouth, in the way her arms stood empty. yes! she wished that there had been more kindness in the beginning, that he had — loved her. that he had understood what she needed from him; that he had not resented her.
but that fire in his goldcoin eyes had burned more in her than shame.
even now he could not give more than apology, but skaigona refused to relinquish anselm without him understanding that only he held himself in such dire esteem. "if i hadn't met you, we wouldn't have gideon. we wouldn't have ezra. and i don't regret them either. they've made me so happy." voice cracked again, the side of a sunlit glacier; the concept she would never hold either of them again tortured her, and her sobs were weakened, muted sounds that she tried to drive down, back down into herself.
i only loved twice in my entire life.
and anselm had been the second, despite the fact he could not bear to hear it, despite the fact that skaigona would not press this unwanted thing upon him, not at the end.
"i won't let you think this is your fault. it's no one's fault. don't — don't go back to them carrying guilt that isn't yours to take," she begged softly.
wasn't anselm's own truth in the tears which slid down his face?
magdalene; she longed to wipe them away, to kiss his forehead in chaste farewell, but as if vines had grown up from the earth, skaigona stood rooted in helpless agony.

Though she was ever quick to push back against the sentiment, it only rallied the deep regret Anselm felt for the course he'd set for her life. And now she was withering here before him, somehow possessed of an unflinching pragmatism that only brought Anselm to sobs.

He did not regret Ezra or Gideon or even Rivenwood; but if he could do it again he would pass her that first day and she would have never known the strife that she now carried -- and would carry -- to her death.

He was silent for a long time, as was ever his custom -- and he imagined that silence must be a burden to her, with so few seconds left to spare. She had said so many beautiful things and deserved so many more loving words returned to her. Once again Anselm failed in his expectations.

He looked first at her face and knew those eyes would haunt him for many winters. He looked at the way her skin tented over a threadbare set of bones; the lackluster spread of coarse fur dull from life's abuse.

So far from the thrilling image he'd first beheld of Heda Skaigona; reduced now to a punching bag for all of life's miseries.

And their children! Sweet Gideon and brave Ezra would now be motherless childs and would carry that curse throughout their own journeys.

If there was an afterlife, Anselm surely did not deserve to see her face there.

Vhere vill you go?

"home to my husband's grave." and though no elaboration was forthcoming, even that was by design; she did not want him to follow her. arms ached to hold him a last time again, though they had never been tender before. skaigona desired so desperately that anselm understand her lack of ill will.
but it was not to be, and even this discourse was weakening her, little by little; strength sapped, she sank down once more and tilted her head in sunflower aura to the little warmth offered by an autumn sun.
"goodbye, anselm. be with our boys."
and tears threatened again; her throat tightening.
skaigona offered a last smile to the man she had wished so much to love and turned away, folding fawnlike into the winter-eaten foliage. if she continued to gaze at anselm she might move again, and his pulling away was not tolerable, not something she could bear again. again, again.
not until she heard him retreat would she weep; not until she was sure he was gone would skaigona cover her face to smother the sobbing.
nearer my god to thee