Meadowlark Prairie you know me - you just don't know it

Why had she stayed?

"My children are here. The ones that are left, anyway."

Her words to Towhee constantly rolled through her mind, but as the days without her mate went on, they took on a sickly quality. She rose one evening, passing by the place where Blueberry and @Vesper slept nearby. She gave them a gentle kiss upon each forehead and then wisped away, ghostlike.

Yes, her children were here.

And there. And everywhere.

Lost, found.

Alive and dead.

Scattered to the winds like autumn leaves.

She had tried and failed to be a good mother; circumstance had always barred it. It was her curse. Perhaps one levied by Potema, so that she could never find true happiness. It would be well within that witch's attitude to do so.

With the moon rising beneath thick clouds, she left the caldera, ambling down the slope with tears coursing down her cheeks.

Nothing had ever worked out. No one had ever loved her—except Mou.

Like magnets, they were, pulled together through space and time, through trials and tribulations alike. Even when turned apart, and repelling each other, something always occurred to turn them back again—and then they found each other, and all was well.

If she was the earth, Mou was her moon, and without his orbital constance, all was chaos.

She stood upon the prairie, gaze shifting back and forth from the caldera to the woods; the caldera to the woods; the caldera to the woods—

Then she moved on, seeking her husband, accepting all that was and all she left behind.