[P] she was always meant to be a star

[Rhoswen]

Rhoswen ►

Time had lost all meaning. The light undulated and lilted before her eyes, casting prismatic spells of heavenly colour against the offset of darkness that bore into the distance like a beast yet tamed. Her heart fluttered like a butterfly caught in a web, suspended within the reams of viscous, glutinous rope that tightened around her throat whilst the web's architect crawled nearer to suck the ichor from her veins. Trapped. Though Rhoswen had always been a wingless woman, she had never felt the absence of escape more staunchly than she did now. Was this a sick twist of fate for her to endure? Was the universe looming upon high, laughing at her misfortune and misjudgement? Denocte had haunted her heels for an eternity - and here she was: drifting upon leaden limbs back towards that godforsaken Gate. There was nothing in Rhoswen's possession to sum up the torment in her heart, no words to elucidate the fog that gathered densely to cloud her thoughts. On and on - the clacking of their hooves ringing high in chorus to hail her grief; the pass was as dank as ever, and even in this warmer weather the fireborne girl felt a chill settling into her bones. It was not often Rhoswen felt cool. She was a house up in flame: oozing basalt and brimstone, breathing hot ash from ruby-cast lungs. There was nothing cold about such a woman - until now.

The events of the last twelve hours could not be wiped from her brain; instead they circled, stuck on a loop she could not break, until she knew every moment with an intense familiarity that bloodied and bruised the inner walls of her flesh. The fingermarks of her shock were pressed like purpled memories on her auburn skin, gritted deep into the vessels until they split and haemorrhaged like a violet cloud. In a single day, she had brought life into this crude insurgent world, only to lose it mere hours after - not her child, but her freedom; for a sunflower will only wilt and die under the silver bloom of starlight. But she had dug her own grave - there was no escaping such a truth, if only tempered by the actions of Raum and Acton and the doltish fucking Davke. Rhoswen tried to reach within herself for the rage that had coiled between her ribs hours earlier in the shadow of Seraphina, but the reply she awaited never came: it was dormant, like a dragon slumbering upon gold. It was by a numb and robotic sense of resolve that Rhoswen moving, that and the silent skeletal child at her hip. The red woman glanced back over her shoulder at the girl, caught between admiring her soft roseate skin and fretting over the limp in her walk and the dull bleakness in her eyes. This had been an ordeal no newborn should have ever endured, but endured it she had, only the Gods knew how. Rhoswen turned back to face forward and felt a flush of pride breach the coldness in her chest. Maternal pride - now that was new.

Dawn's light kissed the mountain, and the light hummed orange, lavender and rose about the bedraggled pair as at last they turned the final bend of Denocte's treacherous pass. The sight which greeted them was bittersweet for Rhoswen: Reich, tall and debonair as ever - a relief to see a face she knew so well, but it did not quell the stirring of discomfort in her stomach. Had she ever imagined this day would come? To return to the Raven Gates with the intention to stay? Her chest tightened, this was wrong, so wrong. "Brother..." Feet away, Rhoswen halted, feeling the brush of her daughter at her side.They were a pitiful sight: dust clung to the sweat that had long since dried beneath the alpine night, their hair twisted and their skin dull from the fatigue that threatened to consume them entirely. The filly's legs trembled as she blinked nebulously up at the towering spectre that was the Night King, quaking with ravenous exhaustion, and Rhoswen caved beneath the guilt. Her throat burned and stung from the emotion that welled suddenly, terribly, and it was all the red woman could do to stop herself from buckling to the floor. Raum, her daughter, Reich, Sera, Bexley - their faces swirled round and round in her head, a calamitous cyclone that spun her with not an ounce of mercy. 

"What have I done?" a whisper, a confession, lament.

@reichenbach here have a traumatised mama and baby, 18 hours post birth ;-;