Meadow

At first, Eirlys doesn’t actually realize someone is speaking to her. The voice that filters in is warm and male, accented strangely and she’s so certain it must be a hallucination. After all, when’s the last time she slept? When’s the last time she ate? It isn’t hard to imagine her own mind failing her, conjuring some stranger to stand before her in a desperate attempt to do something to get her to save herself. Silence falls, a shift of a shadow caught out of the corner of her eye and Eirlys blinks, finally looking up. It isn’t a shadow - it’s a tall black stallion, an unfamiliar face. He must have been the one speaking then, the words must not have been a result of exhaustion, but of the kindness of a stranger.

He’s solid as the night, and about as far from Taurus as one can be - dark where her lover was light, an unbroken color where Taurus was splashed through with white and gold. He’s taller, too, towering over her slight, refined form. Her light blue eyes land on him, not able to muster up much more than an ear twitch in acknowledgement. Is she ok? No. She isn’t ok. She will never be ok. Her ability to come anything close to even resembling ok died along with her daughter.She lets out a sharp, pained sound that might have been a laugh if it hadn’t been ripped to shreds by the grief welling in her chest. “No,” she tells him, voice breaking with a poorly-concealed sob.

Eirlys coughs and looks away, unable to stomach the thought of catching something like pity in this stranger's eyes. She carries enough, she doesn’t need the burden of someone else’s emotions added. This is why she’s avoided anyone else - easier to waste away, without the unsettling judgement of amber eyes on her, without the weight of someone else's expectations. She has no daughter, no mate, no home. She’s suffering through autumn, cold and alone while her aching body reminds her that she isn’t a mother, couldn’t do the single thing she was born with an innate ability to do right. What is there left for her to live for?

“My daughter is dead,” she finally chokes out, feeling obligated to offer this stranger some sort of context. He was, after all, kind enough to check on her. “And I don’t know how to go on without her.”