She should have listened to her churning stomach when she'd crossed the borders into the dale... should have heeded the voices of doubt that haunted her thoughts before she'd even approached the borders from the winding path that led her here to the very last place on the gods' green earth. She'd been wrong to ever dream that finding her mother again would have been a joyful affair where lost child and departed mother would embrace one another and all the pains of the past would evaporate like the early morning mist with the rising of the sun as it would crest the distant mountains to awaken the world and all within in. She had been wrong to think that all those days and nights where she'd cried, wondered what she had done to make her mother go away and leave her behind like some piece of the past that she regretted ever creating. It was undeniable, the deeply ingrained pain that now caused the midnight maiden's legs for shake wth effort not to fail her now. Not in front of her mother, not in front of the one who had cared for her for only a short time just to up and abandon her... She didn't deserve to see her weak and helpless like the small filly she'd once been that used to cry for her mother in the empty night as she longed for something that she was never meant to have.

A part of her had always ached when she saw the way her grandmother acted with her aunts and her uncle. She was so compassionate, so nurturing... She could remember a time when Nova had first been learning to walk on unsteady legs only to fall, a small yet sharp stone finding the flesh of the little girl's knee causing Nova's icy blue eyes to shed tears of pain and she whimpered softly. In mere seconds, Carwen was beside her and licked gently at the young girl's cut while whispering loving words of encouragement as the midnight filly slowly gathered her legs beneath her again and tried once more to walk. She hadn't let Carwen and Ichiro see the deep sadness that had cut into her heart that day. She would never blame her aunts and uncle for the love that they'd been given endlessly from their mother and father. Chiyoko had never known such perfect childhood, only having been raised by her mother for the first year and her father no where to be seen. She hadn't minded the absence of her father, though. She had adored her mother more than anything in the entire world, she had looked up to the woman of brandished gold without falter. Nothing could have ever prepared her for the day that her mother would disappear from her life and become as much of a mystery as her father. Nothing could have ever hardened the young maiden's heart enough to protect her from the pain and the sorrow that haunted her in the years to follow. There was no preparing oneself for abandonment...

The brandished mare attempts to close the distance between them, but for every step forward that she took, Chiyoko took two steps away. No. She did not want to be so close to Talien like she had often dreamt... The winds swirled around her, growing stronger until her sabled locks whipped about this way and that, twin peaks almost instinctively resting against her beautiful head of spanish essence, salty tears beginning to fall from her depths filled with pain and betrayal only to be wiped away from her cheeks and into the zephyrs that twisted around Chiyoko in a protective whirlwind, sparkling like diamonds before they dissipated. Her mother's voice falters before there is a change in her that Chiyoko had never imagined she would see. Despite the weighted sigh, the woman straightens as she speaks."It is good to see you safe"... Disbelief flashed through her icy blue gaze that locked with her mother's. She didn't believe a single word she had spoken, couldn't find it in her heart to. After all this time, had she really even spared the girl a single fleeting thought? It was the words that came next that would break Chiyoko the most..."I did not believe Paraíso survived the disaster"... Finally, her heart could take no more, the whirlwind increasing in speed again, causing the snow to fly not the air around her in what could have been described as a breathtaking and spectacular flurry if not for the anger and hurt that betrayed the girl's gaze as they remained upon her mother's.

"Did you even search for us, mother? Did you even try and find me in the very place you knew I would be... where your own mother and father would be... where your own family would be? Don't tell me lies. I am not the child you left behind! Not anymore."

Her words were cold as ice as she nearly screamed them at the mare of brandished gold, the one who should have been there for her first venture out of Paraíso, the one who should have been there to comfort her as she grew and made mistakes... The hurt and the betrayal could not lay hidden any longer as they found their way into her words that came and close to cracking beneath all the pain and the sadness and the anger. She takes another step back, shaking her beautiful head to free herself from the tears that began to fall so freely.

"I hope you're happy with him, mother. I hope you're happy knowing that you left behind everyone that loved you until their hearts would burst. I hope you're happy knowing that you've hurt the ones who did everything they could, gave you everything they could..."

She couldn't look at her mother any longer as she hissed these words, couldn't stand there any longer. She pivots now, scattered heart thundering madly within her chest as she propelled herself into a full gallop, wild winds whipping about her fiercely as she ran. She didn't dare look back, didn't dare think to stop and give her a proper farewell. She didn't deserve that, didn't deserve a warm word from the one who she had perhaps hurt the most, cut the deepest... Now she finally knew the truth. Now, she finally knew that it was of her own will that she had never come home from Chiyoko that day. The winter air stings her lungs and her limbs threaten to give beneath her, but she pushed through it all, pushed through the warnings her frame screamed as she fled from the scene she had wished never to have sought. I should never have searched for her, she thought to herself, tears continuing to fall into the air as she ran almost blindly, trusting her broken heart and weary limbs to carry her back to Paraíso.... back to the family that loved her.