Kintla Flatlands cause i can hardly see what’s in front of me - these days, and those days too.

vague but assumptions made about her most recent thread in rusalka <3 @Emaleth

nursing her wounds figuratively in a glade nearby, caiaphas spat a hateful gob of spit into the wind. the wind arced it immediately back towards her, and she squinted as she ducked away and mournfully watched the snow fall.

merrick and his dark cur had gone south. it was too late to accompany them on the trail, but if rusalka was to turn its back upon caiaphas, well, that’s where she’d go next. the blundering of the storm made travel a folly, so rather than strike out that very minute as her heart desired, caiaphas hung under the eaves of a shivering pine. her expression was pulled into one of frowning recollection; she was so lost in her thoughts, and the wind so loud and howling in her ears, that she did not realize she was alone.

the solstice was nearing - she could feel it every year around this time, a heart swell in her chest so large that each beat fought painfully against the cage of her ribs. emaleth loved this bittersweet longing, this ache in her bones and blood that were instincts screaming her back home.

++++

it had been good to be with deirdre. her anam cara, forever.

but living there, watching her lightspun sister twirl and weave her ethereal magicks alongside skellige — emaleth was happy, so happy, to see deirdre explode into the fountain of light she was always meant to become. to watch her happiness grow and her light turn blinding as she brought forth life unto the world. once, emaleth might have looked on with bitterness at this. resentful of ever being the shadow in the wood. but now —

if deirdre had ever been the mother, emaleth had always been the crone.

— watching her beloved sister become all she was meant to, the darker twin had come to reject her own expectations and accept this. their magicks, their purposes, were different. they were balance incarnate. if deirdre was the light, then emaleth was the darkness. it made her no less good than deirdre, for the natural world wastes no time on such words as 'good' and 'evil'. things are nothing more than what they are.

it was with no pain, with no resentment, that emaleth left. she bestowed gifts upon her nieces and nephews, blessings that they may become nothing more or less than what they are, and a kiss upon her dear sister's brow.

++++

it was her time, now.

but as much as the sentinels — donnelaith — were her home, she was not yet ready to see how their broken, charred bones may or may not have recovered in the time that had passed. and so after coming all this way, she delayed their reunion even further... pressing inland, despite her discomfort and distaste for it. the storm did not bother her in the least, and she moved with a determined patience until she approached a thin glade — and a figure there.

hello? she queried, eyes blinking against the snow.

a lean figure cut through the snow, truncating the fresh-fallen snow's vision of sterility with her passing. caiaphas noted her with a start, and a shock that blanched her features.

for a moment, she thought the thing lasher -- a skulking ghost of her past that could not be bed. was this it, then? the end of her sanity? she watched emaleth with a growing sense of foreboding, wondering if those that had lost their minds had ever knew they were crazy.

and then through the shifting curtain of falling snow, the figure became less obscured -- allowing caiaphas a slow breath of relief as she heard the woman's voice, and all visions of lasher fled.

"hello." came her rejoinder from under the arm of the pine. she did not move to intercept emaleth, but instead rested her spine against the coarse bough, a frown still troubling her features as she looked upon the girl that for a moment, had wholly deceived her.