mazikeen

t was hard to believe, sometimes, how fortune seemed to favor her. Months had passed since the... incidents... in the Hills, and all was quiet. The days had trickled by into a steady stream of weeks, but no one ever came to call, to pose probing questions about the tragedy that had befallen the king and his family. And why would they? There was no reason to suspect her. No one but the snakes and scorpions had borne witness to her actions, so there was no one to point their damning finger at her. Her bloodied tracks had been consumed by the rain-soaked sands and the stain of her sins washed away by ebbing tides.

She'd expected life to go on just as it had, afterwards. In some fashion it did, but in other ways her world had changed drastically. With her heart racing and adrenaline searing through her veins, it had been all too easy to come home and fall into Helios' warm and welcoming presence, to lose herself to the touch of his skin against hers and delight in baser pleasures she had thus far denied herself.

But with every action (well - almost every) came consequence, and Akkadian was hers. It seemed a clever trick of fate that she should conceive a life so soon after claiming two, but who was she to question the workings of the world?

Mazikeen watched said child now as he frolicked in the shallows beneath a clear sapphire sky, chasing after white-capped waves as they rolled and broke upon the shore. Looking upon him now it was hard not to let her mind drift to the child she'd condemned to the sea those many moons ago. Had his bones been spit back out on the shore yet? she wondered, sparing a glance down the coastline where it stretched towards the Hills. Would she find his mother there, mourning at the site her son was lost? She was often tempted to go back, if only to satisfy her morbid curiosities.

But today would not be the day she returned to the Hills. She did not want Akkadian to spoil her fond reminiscing with his antics. Perhaps once Helios showed to take the colt off her hands she would make the trek, but for now the speckled mare simply idled amongst the dry dunegrass and watched her son frolic, happy to have a quiet moment.