Character & HTML © ApollymiI hear the growl, the sound small and vexed as it escaped her maw. My features contort in confusion as she grows agitated. The words she spits out next catch me by surprise, and I am left staring at her. I feel like she had just reached over and snapped her jaws against my muzzle, like a slap in the face her words hit home. My heart shatters and I growl slightly as she dares to insinuate that my family mourns me, that they live and through her own deluded little mind they must. If this is Heyel's little one, then perhaps the event had caused her mind to slip a little, and she thinks they still live on. I stand, rising as she speaks, her questioning brow urging me to do no less. I must stand, my paws angered by the motion, and legs shaky. but I make it up. "To mourn they must be alive. I have not seen, nor have I heard of any one of them living since escaping that awful fire. You dare spark hope into an old queen's broken heart, little one. To be a ghost I would have to be dead. If you said prayers, perhaps it was for them. I am Zeivah, little wolf. And you are breaking my heart. " I growl at the end, swallowing my hurt and tamping down the tears that spring in my eyes.
Hope rises like a caged beast despite my best efforts to keep that light from surfacing in my eyes. Oceanic depths shine brightly for a moment, as maybe and what if circulate in my mind. Could they truly live? Or is this girl, this obstinate girl, simply crazy? I note the tense way she approaches me, that recognizable taut way we all hold ourselves that speaks of an attack. I may be the more peaceable out of the ones she may or may not have grown up, but if she thinks that I will go down, she has much to learn still. As I speak the old Latina, I watch her body relax, the tension leave her face, though the suspicion remains. She speaks and my test is over, there are very few in Moladion who speak that tongue, my family and Heyel's apprentices are the only ones to my knowledge. Much can change in three years, and much has. "Non sic adulescentes, non magis, parum Malina." (Not so young, any more, little Malina.) I want to go to her, to hold her, to crush her to me and see if there is some trace of Heyel still on her. I know better, she would likely try to snap my face off, but I smile all the same. That bright happy smile I used to wear when looking at my children as they played, the same look I gave Heyel. My heart slams in my chest, rebelling against the influx of warm fuzzy feelings in the face of Malina.
Warm, salted tears sting my eyes as I watch her, I don't know what to say at this point. How do you tell someone you wish to keep them close because they are a last link to your family? I do not want to tell her, she has lived her life for three years now without guidance, and she will continue to do so without my aid. I do not wish to impede on what she has built because of some link she had to my family. I feel the rug slip out from beneath my heart, hope crashing with the sound of one thousand glasses breaking. Dashed, hope was dashed, and I feel another crack add itself to my shattered heart. No, I could not be so selfish if I wanted to be. I cast a sideways glance at her, moving to the lake to drink, letting the icy waters cool my throat. Cold wind strikes my exposed side and back and I pause my lapping to inhale sharply as it hits my sensitive skin. My ears tilt back and I resume my motions, one ear cocked in Malina's direction. Waiting, watching without looking, and wishing like hell this pain would just stop.
Zeivah
"Baptized in fire, I rise like the phoenix from the ashes"