breathing dreams like air
In the past year, Promise has become adept at reading guilt behind it's many disguises. She seems her old enemy now in her father's eyes, can feel the weight of it on his shoulders, even if she doesn't know the exact words with which he is attempting to beat himself up with.
She aches to see him feeling guilty. It has made her hate that small, still body in ways that she cannot truly work through on her own. Promise knows it is not the baby's fault, that it had meant no ill will when it arrived too small and too quiet to a family that loved it dearly before it had even arrived. But the absence of that baby's life had detonated a nuclear bomb in the protected core of her family and stolen away what was left of Promise's childhood too.
"Don't," she murmurs softly, half plea, half exhaustion. She does not have it in her to support another parent, although she does not want him to hurt either. Promise leans into him again, attempting to brush her pale muzzle against the strong expanse of his shoulder as she gathers her own thoughts and prepares for what is next.
She was not lying when she said that Hymn was doing better. But better did not mean good.
"Of course I will," she answered his request, although the follow-up request made her throat tight with painful memories. She nodded though, still eager to please her father, and offered a fleeting, fickle smile at her nickname.
She begins by taking them down a small deer trail narrow enough that leaves and branches tickle her occasionally and will likely touch him, too. For a moment, she doesn't speak, just keeps her ears tilted toward her father as she gathers what there is to say.
"It was... bad, at first." She murmurs, her voice a little strained so that is loud enough for him to hear behind her.
"She wouldn't eat. Or drink."
Promise didn't like remembering that day. She didn't like remembering most days of the past year, but that day had been the worst. Hymn had made it a day or two after the birth, long enough to convince Annubis that she would be fine, before the will to exist had slipped from her. Days of pleading, begging, cajoling. Of screaming and arguing and lashing out at her mother's prone and heedless form.
In the end, Promise had been forced to drag Hymn. To strike her. To bite and pinch and be cruel. It had taken every ounce of her ingenuity and strength to get her mother through those worst days, and she skittered past the memories like a nervous deer, not lingering too long in the darkness.
"Eventually, we had a rhythm but it was like... she was gone, inside. Like I was taking care of a shell." They hadn't spoken. Or rather, Promise had spoken, Hymn had listened silently, her gaze somewhere in the distance.
"Last season she started speaking again... not much, but it was something."
The first time Hymn had said Promise's name again had made the girl's knees weak with relief and she had wrapped herself around her mother's neck and sobbed with joy. It was no promise of recovery, but like most gains they'd made, it was
something.
Promise's steps grew slower for a moment, and she paused, shifting on the narrow path awkwardly with her rump deep into the greenery as she sought to face Annubis.
"She's... she's not the same, dad. Try not to be scared?"
Hours or minutes later - it was hard to tell this deep in the jungle - they arrived in a small clearing, hardly large enough for two horses. Promise halted at the entry to the small area, her heart hammering loudly in her ears. Hymn stood before them.
Gone was the sleek summery coat that Atlantean residents wore yearly, and in it's place a ragged coat of malnutrition, just beginning to shed out into something better. There were hollows at her hips, above her eyes and the suggestion of ribs beneath a thin coat of fat. Her hooves were longer than they should be, not worn down by travel. But most startling were her glassy, almost vacant eyes. At their arrival, she turned toward the pair slowly, but no recognition formed.