Volpe
"Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love.
That is our great glory, and our great tragedy."
She had left because she had been afraid of all the things that her mother had told her. She had been afraid that the blue stallion would lock her up and throw away the key, perhaps taking her baby from her by force instead of this falsehood of gifting away the girl. Volpe had only returned because she had seen how the world became in the eaves of autumn, and she had decided it was best to offer the girl a home, to give her any protection that she could- to try and secure for the girl a future in which she did not have to hide or feel unsafe.
Volpe was never really certain why she had let her body run away with her thoughts that night so long ago when she and Solgar had met for the first time. They had met briefly, and they had loved- so she told herself. When she was thick with child, she cursed herself for her naivety, and she cursed the little mouth that she would be bringing into the great wide world without the smallest hope for a shelter or an extended family. Just like Sova had deprived her of a father and a family, just like Sova had crowded her into the trees and hid her away from the others like the perlino was the mare's own private secret treasure.
“I came back for her...” She says in an unmistakably small voice, as if she is admitting that she was not a capable mother, and that she does not want to wake the child for fear of admitting to her golden face that she was a failure. “I want her to be safe...” Her voice trails off softly, amber eyes darting away to lean against the girl's skin, and she almost feels as though she should be crying- that she was letting her lovely daughter down in the worst way imaginable. “She can have a home here, and a family. Things I can't give her if I stay in the crossing.”
What she was most afraid of, is that if she were to find a home in another stallion's land, that her daughter would not be permitted to go out into the world, and that Liat would be forced to become a concubine like her mother. Or worse, that her baby would be killed upon sight. |
