Luneshale Pass figlia

as usual, fiamma strolled toward the nursery with purposeful steps, eager to check on the seedlings and how they had progressed. her favorite in particular had thrived over the winter, and others she'd worked with soto to cultivate were coming along, as well.

the sylph picked her way nimbly down the rocks, face lit in anticipation—which perhaps was her undoing. 

for with each step, danger lurked—

and she failed to register the death rattle until she'd trod upon a slender, coiled body.

a flash of fangs, set into her ankle;

oh dio, she spat, shaking the affected forepaw. without thinking, she struck back, jaws snapping toward the enemy—which, in turn, hit her throat and retreated, like a bolt of lightning.

fiamma cast a baleful look toward the retreating serpent, brows knitted. she'd known snakes to be biters on occasion, though they were rare in the mountains. still, she carried on toward their harvesting grounds, intent on carrying out her duties and

things slowed down.

she felt suddenly as if each limb weighed a thousand pounds, and yet her heart raced faster than anything she'd known before. she shook her head, trying to clear the growing fog from her brain. 

a breath, a wordless exclamation;

the plants were in sight.

fiamma made a beeline toward them, but she was moving more slowly and haphazardly than ever. spittle was growing at the corners of increasingly slack lips; her paws dragged along the sand, and she eventually collapsed in a heap of limbs.

no, she managed, her tongue gone numb. she reached for her precious seedling, but her grasp fell short.

heartbeat slowing, almost in a perfect downward rhythm.

she struggled to breathe.

finally, god has found you, bastard daughter. you've lived a lie all your life, and now the truth has come for your soul.

no, fiamma whispered, as the tip of her paw rested within inches of the green.

she'd die this way, sprawled upon the desert, face twisted in desperate agony as the venom seized her entirely—gorgeous blue gaze fixed upon the plant she would have given her life for.

perhaps she had.

fiamma, soto greets in a near-jovial purl, the humor in his glinting gaze stilling as she doesn't move.

he steps close. by now she should have noticed him and lifted from the ground.

no, a sharp inhale scraping his throat as he nudges her and feels unnatural rigidity along her skin.

soto cuts back another gasp as he walks around her reaching limbs and sees writ across her face the handiwork of an asp: putreous, swollen face, kill-marks streaking down her cheek.

this is all the fucking witch's fault.

no. ay, fiamma. the strength in his limbs gives out.

soto buries his head into the stillness of her spine.

---

he buries her at luneshale's highest promontory. he packs stone over her grey body and chokes back a wail of agony. his captain.

he would miss the stern glint in her eyes, the no-nonsense efficiency of her presence.

another stone for the cairn.

he would miss her scent woven into luneshale's boders.

another stone for the cairn.

he would miss the tending of her garden; those saplings brought to improbable life by her careful curation.

another stone for the cairn.

when he was done rocks of every color piled around her body and over it, chest-height and foreboding.

 he cursed the desert, he cursed the snake, and he cursed the fucking witch --

that night he sent for @Kemal and informed him to watch leto and her children. don't send for me, he cautioned the guardian.

and then under the solemn face of a lonesome moon, soto departed luneshale.