[P] but I'd risk it all just to be with you

[Rhoswen]

Rhoswen ►

 
Solterra's dawn had broken through the everlong darkness like a dove sent aflight to seek land: neonate, hopeful. With the splintered gold came too the promise of redemption; a prayer murmured in the suffusion of early light eddying, percolating, over the infinite dunes: gold upon gold. Let this day be better than the last. Too long now she had avoided the sight of him, though their truths hung still upon her shoulders like a cross too heavy to bear. Rhoswen loved him, had loved him so since the first drop of summer rain, but, you see, time was never on their side. It swung over their heads with an ever-threatening chime, looming lower and darker with every peal; would this untouched love live to see the end of winter? Secrets hissed between them, serpents beneath sand and shadow, and Rhos knew if whatever this was should stand a chance of survival, the greatest secret of all needed to be revealed. And so, upon the wing of the earliest hour she had swept out into the desert before the heat of midday could deter her appeal for privacy - though not before slipping a note beneath Raum's door.

Pregnancy was not what she had expected, if she had expected anything at all. It was not gracious nor feminine, it did not endow her with waves of happiness or saturate her thoughts with maternal love. It had, however, accomplished many other (most undesirable) things. Her body was a battlefield, wrought with hormones and changes that, as a materialistic girl, Rhoswen found difficult to endure. There was no hiding the deep swell of her flanks anymore without great creativity - this alone could explain her increasing absence from court. For she did not wish to be the object of discussion, at least not for this! A child would change everything, it already had, and the girl of rose and flame was not nearly ready.

The auburn-skinned woman reached the oasis at last, her back screaming a song she had come to know so well and in answer, she eased slowly into the cool oasis to ease the dull pain throbbing on all cylinders. Early she had come, but with good reason; to embark upon such a hike, even at this time of the year, in her condition was foolish at best, suicidal at worst. For a while, Rhoswen bathed in the gentle touch of Solis' water, relieved of the weight that hummed around her abdomen, until her lids began to droop and a dousing of fatigue came pouring over her marbled brow. Beneath the wild flora, then, the red lady settled; the shade protecting and concealing her just enough. Minutes ticked into hours as Rhos dosed quietly, breaking every now and then to graze at the sparse grasses lining the oasis banks from where she lay until at last, the horizon parted before a lone ironcast silhouette. She'd recognise those shoulders anywhere. Her stomach was a cauldron: bubbling with all the words she had prepared, all the anxiety that had lain dormant in the glucose of her blood. 

"You called for me?"

Raum touches her crown and she cannot stifle it a moment longer, drowning in the solitude of her secret - their secret. Upon capricious avian legs Rhoswen stands, stepping back so that the ghost may absorb the sight of her entirely. Eyes of smoke brew darkly, lingering on the edges of a sad, violent storm: this was no ordinary circumstance, and Rhoswen could not feel the happiness of it, not for one moment. Almost as if in response to it's mother distress, the child within flinched - reaching out with a tiny unformed limb to cast a silent ripple across one sanguine flank. Rhos twitched one ear back, but did not break her gaze with Raum - so unlike her to be withdrawn, almost fearful. It was only a matter of time before Solterra's snakes sunk their venom-laced fangs into her lover's neck, the traitor of their court, and what then? She had been a damn fool to let their intricate affair play out so publicly, had she forgotten the barbarism of Day Court's history? 

It is all she can do to utter the cracked, damning words.

"What are we going to do?"

@Raum