Fallen Tree Cove The Room Where It Happens [M]

Lunette is the Asshole of the Year, I think.

Lunette Vuesain

I’ve got my love stuck in my head

Her poor, beautiful mother—Lunette had to look away for a moment. She.. she guessed she had wanted someone to understand, not for someone to ..be afraid, of her, for her? For her life? Her life wasn't in danger. She doubted she would have the courage to end herself. She mightn't be good enough to do it properly. And besides, it was the easy way out. She swallowed. She hadn't wanted to worry her mother. She had.. she had just wanted for someone to say.. well, she didn't know. Okay. Me too. Whatever. Apparently the rest of the pack didn't go around thinking it'd be better to be dead.

The space between them felt wider than the Serpent itself, and colder, too. On one hand, Lunette, small and silver and confused and hurt and angry. And on the other, her mother, suddenly worried. She turned her head back, and looked at the wolf she had loved and looked up to all her life. When had she become so..small? So fragile? So mortal? She wondered if she should reach out, touch her muzzle to Namid's pale cheek, or.. since when was she the one giving out comfort?

Because she had broken this in the first place.

"Reckless?" she echoed, almost insulted. Reckless? Since when could anyone ever fathom her being reckless of all things? She, who was more timid than a mouse—reckless? The laughter bubbling up her throat was bitter and unfamiliar. "You let the reckless one go! You let her go, you didn't lose her! And where is she? How is she doing? Is she still alive? We don't know, because somebody though it was a great idea to let a wolf not even a year old go off on their own!" She chuffed, carried by the high of her rage, and grasping every moment of it, because she knew she was going to touch down soon. "And you call me reckless."

That was that, and she was spent. The embers of her fury cooled. The wreckage of the battlefield all that was left—blood and bones and bruises. And what had that achieved, honestly? She'd yelled at her mother, who she had also.. told she wanted to be dead, and obviously rattled to the core. Here, have a present! Your kid doesn't want to be alive! That enough? No? Here, have your kid yell at you about things that obviously pain you!

Oh, she was such a miserable fucking idiot. Lunette felt her lungs and eyes tremble.

"It's not your fault," she said, quietly, brokenly. "Stopping Ismena is like stopping a storm. You just can't." And what else was she going to say, to somehow make good all the stuff she'd spit into the air between them? Could she take it back? Did she want to take it back?

".. I'm sorry for being an idiot," she whispered, and stepped closer, intending to put her head over her mother's neck and hold her close and whisper "I love you, Mama," into her soft silver fur.

I have loved the stars too fondly

Lunette was all over the place in that moment, Namid knew, but what volatile words came out of her mouth next left her mother absolutely speechless. Her jaws gaped open like a gasping fish, mismatched eyes wide with shock. The girl pounded the matriarch with everything she had, it seemed. It felt like she’d been slapped across the face, her cheeks burning. She knew everything that Lunette was saying was true. It was something that she battled with every day, the thought of her children dead or dying because she hadn’t been strong enough to tell them no. Because she’d been naive in her family belief that travel was good for them, that it opened their eyes. She hadn’t known that it would crush her every morning to wake up and have her first thought be whether or not they were fed. If they were okay. If they were even alive. And some days it felt like she would never know, which terrified her even further. Lunette couldn’t know that everything she said Namid had said to herself a thousand times already.

Yet, it didn’t take the sting away any.

The girl obviously regretted what she said, but at the same time Namid knew that she’d meant every word. To know that her child thought that of her, the child that she’d done her damnedest to provide for. The child that had come from her very womb. It was too much, all of it was too much. There was only so much that she could handle and this was her point. She scarcely felt the embrace in her numbed state. She felt nothing and everything at the same time, especially keenly aware of the painful ache in her chest. “I think it best if you go cool off,” she said, pulling away from the girl and turning.

She walked away, staring blankly ahead of her. Her limbs moved on their own, tugging her toward the borders to escape the territory. Then she was running, gasping, her lungs pulling it everything but her head was swimming like she couldn’t get enough oxygen. And then it just...stopped. Her limbs gave out and she crashed to the ground in a fit of sobs, cursing herself, the ancestors, her fate, everything that she could and then some. She cried until her throat was raw and had vomited, then dry heaved. Her grief and shame was so heavy, like a deep cloud. It was poisonous. When she had no more tears to spend and her head was pounding, the woman laid there quivering and did so for a long time.

Exit.

To be fearful of the night

(This post was last modified: May 27, 2017, 07:24 PM by Namid.)

Lunette Vuesain

stop me cause I can't say no

Well.

That was that.

Everything was well and truly fucked.

It seemed that everything Lunette had needed to say was everything Namid had needed not to hear. Had she known that? Yes, yes of fucking course she had known that. Something in her had known her mother was fragile, and had known that she wasn't the only god-damned wolf who cared about Ismena; she knew these things, and as she stood there, trying to hold a body that might as well be dead for the chill it emanated, she was afraid that she had used it as fuel for her fire.

Had she wanted something else to break, for once? To tear something beautiful down? Just because she could? Just because the fight with the lynx had woken something dark and furious in her—the thing that said this is my shit and stay away from it? Was everything she suppressed coalescing into some kind of nuclear warhead ready to explode?

It had certainly felt like it.

But with her mother so cold and so lifeless and unresponsive, all she wanted to do was cry a river to sweep them both away, and find some way to undo it—take it all back, reverse it, make it so that she hadn't said it, or at the very least, erased the moment from Namid's mind and left Lunette alone with the guilt and shame and grief (—for that's what it was, hot and bright and painful in her chest).

She couldn't, though.

She couldn't, and she was left with the feeling of having destroyed something for forever.

“I think it best if you go cool off,” Namid said and turned away from her girl, whose eyes widened and her core shivered and she looked stricken but Namid couldn't see; her back was already turned. "Mama?" she whispered hesitantly, but her mother was already walking away. Can't you see I'm no longer angry?

She had pushed it too far. Like a too large, unruly child, uncertain of her own strength and the limits of the world, she had broken something and it wasn't healing, not yet. She bit her lips. Drew blood. It tasted sharp and warm and salty. Her mother was still walking away. "Mama," she said again, louder, but still she did not turn. Damn it, I'm sorry. Tell me what to do to fix this.

The snow was threatening to obscure the silver back. "Mama!" she cried after her, something in her voice breaking, all the sorrow overflowing now that the barriers were broken down; she hadn't.. she hadn't meant for this.. she couldn't make herself follow, when it was so obvious that she was not wanted (were you ever, little silver child?), but it broke her in ways she had not even imagined to watch her mother disappear in the snowfall and leave her behind.

It was just her. And the snow. And the mountain. Her breath coming in rapid, white puffs. The sky spinning as the child collapsed, heart racing, limbs twitching.

She didn't know if the blackness came because she couldn't breathe, or if it came because everything seemed to lose its meaning. She just knew that she lay there, for hours and hours and hours, until the dead of night swept everything in a pitch black blanket and guilt drove her to her feet—guilt of dying when she had promised not to.

She wanted to, though. She wanted to so badly because she had broken something she thought unbreakable, and she was afraid to even touch the pieces of it.