Sunbeam Lair & so it stood, bitter-sweet, still fair to see, but stricken, soon to fall and die?

Dated 6/23.

Exile was best coined with endless dishonor, or held with an abysmal shame. But Aurëwen only felt such euphoric resolve in her breast; her heart feathering about with an easement she hadn’t felt in moons. 

She’d drawn both of her sun-and-stars to the Lair beneath a guise of foraging; but now she knelt before them both, once-lovely countenance both solmen and earnest. “Oh, jewels of my life...” Aure wasn’t the heartless sort to simply wish away her children’s love for the mountain lake and those there. But she told them the truth, all the same:

“I have not had a love for Diaspora since your nontu chose to leave — and even less so, when he left once more.” A flicker of silence, then, “I challenged for ze General’s place, for I do not share in his ...vision,” the word was low, bit out, before her voice tendered with reasoning once more, “yet, I lost to him. And now we must leave.” And she would never regret what she’d just imposed, however foolishly— 

She hadn’t lost; not really. The only thing that had been lost were three thriving souls from Diaspora. They never were theirs to begin with. There were other things to dwell on, better saved for later rumination, but ...that was the only thing she could find a bit of triumph in — that its leader would away with even lesser paws that’d first come to him.

Aure whet her scarred lips, argent half-sight peering into @Dragomir’s hazel. “We must seek your father out, wherever he may be.” Dark lashes rested, weighted by a flourish of despondency — but then she meet her son’s eyes once more. “But, my loves, wherever our home comes to be ...ze sea or no, ze hinters or no ...it will not be home if we remain so apart. Do you understand, my loves?”

Dragomir was a willing attendant on Aurë's so-called foraging venture. While it didn't outwardly seem like the boy had acquired his mother's taste for botany, there was something in him compelled by all forms of science, and helping his dam to gather things was fun enough. Sometimes he would find something truly interesting and he would bring it home with him, like an old snail shell or a bit of glittering stone. Never had they left the bounds of the territory on such a trip before, but until Aurëwen bent before Isi and him with a certain gravitas, he thought nothing of that.

What she told them then was little short of treason.

Dragomir didn't understand it. He understood the gist of what she was saying, now that he had a fully developed vocabulary, but he didn't understand why she had an issue with the way things were in Diaspora. Granted, he also didn't understand what Stigmata's vision was. Who could say whether he would agree or disagree with the general's vision? Being raised with Diaspora made it almost certain he would agree in his adulthood, but this was not meant to be. Aurëwen told them they were to leave, and his face crumpled.

Why? he demanded to know, his face screwed up into the petulance of a wronged child. What about our home? What about our friends? Pretty much the only thing that he agreed with about this entire thing was the need to find Vercingetorix. He did so begrudgingly, with a glare and a quiet, he left us.

She received the protests from both children with a mild grace that’d all but vanished from her countenance; rubied crown bowed, as she listened to her son’s demands. It was only when a lull came between them that Aurëwen looked back into his eyes, and finally went into depth about the situation — before, and now, in the aftermath: 

“Generalul a crezut că ar fi cel mai bine să părăsească Diaspora chiar și atunci când numărul ei a scăzut atât de scăzut. El a crezut că este mai bine să nu primească nici un ajutor din alte pachete; alianțe. Pentru că am crezut că e ridicol să o fac, l-am provocat; și chiar dacă nu am reușit, nu regret. Nu voi regreta niciodata lupta pentru ceea ce cred ca este corect.” Her last words petered off into an adamant little huff, but she soon readied herself again; shifted her weight from where she knelt before balaur and belea.

For a heartbeat, her lashes pressed closed as her wearied mind drudged up the rest of what she needed to say. “În ceea ce privește prietenii, o casă ... tatăl tău dorește să-ți dea marea și sora ta, știi? Și ți-aș da un munte, da? Cu toate acestea, balaurul meu ... pentru tot ce le iubesc ... inima mea este și cu războinicul nostru. Da, tatăl tău ne-a lăsat — dar el e familie și nu lăsăm familia în urmă.” Eyes unfurled once more, gleaming stella, and the silver ponderously canted her head to consider them both in her sights.

Being solemen and truthful, for all her gentle heart, was all she knew, really; even with younger souls. “Nu pot spune când vom găsi, Dragomir. Există mult teren pentru a călători, dar voi doi sunteți atât de puternici. Îți promit amândoi că voi face totul în mine să te țin în siguranță. Sigur și hrănit, și vă arăta toate noile locuri minunate ale acestei lumi. Suntem familie, dragii mei.”

Aurëwen looked into her daughter’s fawn face, and then into the mauve of her son’s. “I cannot make this journey alone — and there are no others I’d rather have with me.” Her own argent gaze was impassioned, entreating, “You two are my blood and bone. We will find him.”

He listened for all he was worth, but in the end Dragomir's opinion still differed from Aurë's. Of course it did. He was just a boy who had just learned he was leaving his home and his friends behind, and the reasons were unfathomable to him. Pack politics were no place for a child's mind, and so this child's mind refused to understand the gravity of what had transpired between Aurëwen and the rest of Diaspora, particularly Stigmata. To Dragomir, things like the sea and a mountain amounted to nothing when compared with his home, his friends, the bonds he had forged and the ones he had yet to.

He latched instead onto talk of Vercingetorix. He loved his sire dearly. He wanted the man back in his life more than anything. A young boy needed his father to guide him. But he was angry with Vercingetorix and it was easier to articulate that than the way he felt about leaving Diaspora. If he was older perhaps he would have choicer words for his mother on her impulsive decision, how it affected the lot of them and not just her, and how she hadn't asked them if this was even what they wanted first... but none of that occurred to a boy of three months.

He left us! Dragomir reiterated, his frown creasing into an outright glare. If we do not leave family behind then why did he leave us behind? And weren't the wolves of Diaspora family as well? To Dragomir, who was born upon those slopes and knew nothing else, they were. Blodreina and Praimfaya, Mahler, Kazimir... they were all family to him. Or had been. They are family too, insisted Dragomir, but the fight left his voice at his mother's final words. She needed them with her, and that was why she had chosen to uproot them from their homes in pursuit of her ideals, whether it was best for them or not.

He could not think of his dam as selfish. Not truly. But in that moment Dragomir had his second taste of disappointment in someone important to him, the first being Vercingetorix's bitter departure, and he grew quiet and sullen as he gave in to the fact that they were now homeless and the wolves of Diaspora were no longer their comrades. They would go to find Vercingetorix, for which he was full glad... and yet it hid beneath a veil of betrayal as tears filmed his eyes.

No matter if the both of them came to hold her in contempt for this, she’d keep them safe. Teach them what they needed to know. Still: over time, as the numbers dwindled, as the more forcible attitude of the nomads became ever clearer to her, gratitude had soured into umbrage — and the fortnight that she could’ve confided in the sisterly wanlinda about her resolute disapproval there, or could’ve asked after her children of a supposed leave-taking ...she hadn’t.

Headstrong, and ...yes, impulsive. Impulsive, no matter how long those feelings had festered within her. She’d thrown herself at Stigmata twice — figuratively, at the meeting, and then more literally-so only a bell ago, now. So if her actions discovered her as an impulsive little ingrate towards Diaspora, then that same General was nothing more than a narcissistic bastard.

Her resolve almost returned at that ...and just about faltered once more, seeing the tearful disappointment in her son’s face — and possibly in Isilmë’s — and the betrayal that burned in his eyes. A muscle flickered somewhere in her moon jaw. Only for this moment would she let herself feel the shame of her actions, and did so with a head that bowed only further.

All of this settled on her shoulders in hindsight, a tad too late, just as many of her realizations of last predicaments. But all she could promise anymore was that they’d find another home, or the father of their family, both — in the fervid hopes that they’d all be together again.

Aure loosed a melancholic, ragged little breath, “Drago... I did what I thought was best for us,” and yet found nothing of weight left to say. I love you certainly wanted to leap from her lips; but did she deserve to say even that, when she hadn’t considered the minds of her babes in this? ”Avatyar ni,” was what she murmured instead, all worn and weary, his tears coaxing a veil of her own. ...Would they ever, though?

Her chin wobbled in full, now, ears cast away from her sun-and-stars, but she only kept her scarred guise bowed or turned — until she looked through her shame and to the both of them once more, eyes hard and dew-bright. “We must leave,” she rasped, blinking hard, soft and sorrowful and now stern, gingerly rising to her pale paws. “We must.”

He recognized the resignation in his dam the moment her breath came out in an exasperated sigh, but still his gaze was hard on her. The tears were equal parts hurt and anger, but it was only the blustering anger of a young child unable to cope with the breadth of their own feelings. Children felt things so poignantly that were small issues to adults; Dragomir felt the loss of Diaspora's company like the keen edge of a knife against his heart. That was putting it dramatically, but it felt like a dramatic change to him.

He said nothing more, only followed along when Aurë insisted that they had to leave. It wasn't like he had a choice; Aurë had been banished, unbeknownst to him, and she could not leave him behind. Not only because she could not handle it, but because if she did, Dragomir would be indoctrinated into Diaspora's culture so firmly that he would in time come to view her as an enemy and a threat, the same way Stigmata viewed non-Diasporans in his mountains. She likely foresaw that and knew that leaving them with their pack was not an option.

None of this was known to him, which didn't make any of it easier. He followed in silence, remaining sullen for the remainder of the day.