Meeting not-Vidarr, being invited to return to Luthien had sparked some semblance of life back into Eirlys. Something about the horrified way the stallion had watched her and Rota, the way he had tried to so kindly coax them back to his home broke something in her. She had agreed to go and then lingered on, but Rota had not. Nearly two now, the yearling filly had gently departed, making off on her own. Perhaps they would reunite; perhaps Rota would forget her entirely, find somewhere to put the pain of her childhood behind her.
Eirlys expects that this is another child she will never see again. It is her curse to learn nothing from her history, repeat her failings over and over again.
Not having evidence of her own uselessness right there, as a mother to both Anwen and now Rota, Eirlys was...not better. Not normal - no, she didn’t think she would ever be that fearlessly in love filly again, happy and with the entire world around her. But functional again, and even this is a step she never expected to be able to take.
She’s still in the Meadow, where she had met the solicitous Rilke back in the end of autumn, unable to reopen the wounds so haphazardly stitched closed by her departure from the home she shared with Vidarr. As the sun crests over the horizon, the snow below her feet glinting bright-white and almost painful, she narrows her blue eyes and looks around.
Seeing nothing of note, she sets out towards the trees; better to try and scavenge whatever meager grass she can find there than dig through even deeper snow. Eirlys is barely paying attention, thoughts drifting and mind slowly emptying of anything but what she needs to do next to survive when she catches a scent on the wind. She freezes where she stands, head lifted to better catch the breeze.
It’s unmistakable, but just cannot be. She hisses out an icy, frozen breath and then rushes forward.
What she finds is somehow simultaneously every nightmare and every foolish hope she has had these past years, joined as one and impossibly come to stand in front of her. Real. Here. Her truest love.
Her greatest betrayer.
“Taurus?” Eirlys finally chokes out, breathy and disbelieving. All thoughts of a harsh insult and immediate violence have fled, any grand imaginings she had of making him pay, making him suffer have gone up like so much smoke. Faced with him, with the solidness of his form before her, so achingly familiar and equally hated, she is paralyzed.