My head moves up from it insufferably long misery, a feeling patting on through my points. I look towards the sensation, my emotions suddenly becoming upbeat and joyful. A child. An aelenvari child is patting at my legs. Not just any, a son!
An aelenvari son is here, patting at my leg. It's something so absurdly positive and potent at that, that it almost makes me cry with joy... Were it not for other details being so present on my mind. Still, it is perhaps the single most welcome distraction I could ever have.
I move to pick the son up, frowning as I look around for their mother. The son seems to be too young to speak at worst, and too young to speak clearly and detail heavy at best. I look one way and then another, turning towards the noises of a crooked, wounded voice. My points carry me ahead, the son feeling awfully familiar in two ways and I find the mother...
Dandel'lhia.
"Well, isn't this a surprise." I say, my usual petulance and venom regarding her presence completely absent. The Gilded-Bark has long since stopped being the centre of my world, and Nin has recently been set aside, too. Seigunfrei isn't ever going to pay attention to a woman whose heart is firmly set on the Gilded-Bark because of the fact they... They...
They had a son. A child. She was pregnant for a chunk of last year and gave birth to her seed. The seed then sprouted into a son... The one thing that overrides every standard about a stronger lover. Having a child already with another.
The one I once saw as nothing but a thief of my two former interests has far more than I ever will at this rate.
Dandel'lhia musters her courage, and she marches ahead, she takes her son back from me with little trouble and backs up, her trauma-made fright winning over as she clutches her confused son close, "I-Ivy-Mother!?"
A solemn frown takes over my features at the title. No, not anymore. Not anymore. My measure and my worth as a petal is gone and now I am but a little birdie in the lands of raptors and dragons. I look at the scarred woman before me, taking in her posture and how much it has recovered since I hurt her so badly. Gods and goddesses above... I caused so much grief and harm towards her, and out of nothing more than petty jealousy...
And I'm too pathetic to even speak my apology.
I look away, instead focusing on the tender spot that makes it all about me, "I am no longer an ivy-mother, Dandel'lhia."
A moment of amusement and bemusement crosses my features as I note the fact I was able to say her name. Not 'thief,' no slur or insult. Just, Dandel'lhia. Her name, no issue at all.
Even more so when one considers the fact that what I did to her hair is still there. It's growing out, naturally, as is the case with all hair dye, magical or not... But there's more thistle purple than dandelion butter-gold to her scalp right now. For now, she still bares the false colour and probably flinches all too often at being called 'Thistle'lhia' or something approximate. Any other aelenvari here, especially them, probably notice it more.
Though, it does make me wonder why she's not taken the means to get rid of the dye? The wind-people surely have the capacity to do it, no? Or does she simply not want to? That would be quite the peculiar want to have. I guess I'll only find out if I make the time to ask her now or later, should either time be servicable to her.
Even just a glance makes it clear all she sees is the ivy-mother that mutilated her... The dissonance between what we're thinking is certainly a dichotomy. One unbecoming of two women mutually happy to see a beautiful baby boy in their presence. A son, healthy and to-be-strong.
"I-I'm sorry, I... Got to... I have to go." Dandel'lhia says, her voice threatening to give out as she turns to move off.
"What's his name?" is all I ask and she stops with a flinch as if the sound of steel being drawn was what hit her ears instead. Either a sign I still hold some authority as an ivy-mother to her, to some extent... Or, she's simply terrified. The older me would've delighted in both. I just simply acknowledge it for the latter now. I, the one who had hurt her so badly.
"Spruce'endoor, his name is Spruce'endoor." Dandel'lhia is shy to admit, but, she manages a confident voice either or. The uncertainty of saying it is still there, but compared to her earlier words? One might say they're proud of it. Though, having been around so many newborns, I have a degree of... Training... That she might not understand. I can pick up in the worries a parent has when saying their child's name. Most often from those who have realised their darling daughters are destined to be roots. Or that their names are not as full as mine is.
"Spruce'endoor..." I repeat to myself, tasting the words as I consider the name... There were certainly spruce trees on the way here, when I was travelling to this city, he must've been born about then, "He came out of his seed when you had just arrived here?"
Dandel'lhia nods in response to my question and she finally musters the courage to free herself from the tyranny of the power she thinks I have over her. She leaves, my eyes staying on her not with malice, but simple joy. A small smile adorns my lips as I look at that rather healthy son of hers. He came out so well, despite the roughness of his time as a seed in its later period. Perhaps he was even forced to sprout because of the relative trauma his seed faced beforehand in the hive of the parasites?
Still... I guess Oak'endoor was truly suited for his role as the Gilded-Bark of our flower, his first child and its a son. The gods and goddesses are truly smiling on his communion with her. And the fact she's managing despite it all? Truly, a display of luck and effort that is to be admired. Especially given that she came here with the Valkinvar.
Yet, as she vanishes from view, my thoughts turn foul again. I was afraid of two loves in my life being stolen. The Gilded-Bark... And Nin. The former never so much as looked at me like a woman. The latter, before he turned was actually going to... Annoyance flashes over my face, my eyes narrowing tightly as my fists surprisingly stay relatively loose.
Before Nin almost savagely beat me to near-death when he first turned, he was going to impregnate me... Back when his claim to being a human was more than just his soul, heart and mind. When being an osibindah was this strange curiosity that only afflicted a limb of his body. Back when he was going to pollinate my womb with a son of his own making...
Yet, for all the anger I'm trying to force through my veins, I can only find myself blushing like the inexperienced virgin I am. A clear, warm flow of blood that goes throughout me, flushing me from the tips of my points, the furthest wiggle of my tail and the edges of my blade-like ears.
All because of a memory, a chance to end up a mother like Dandel'lhia has been for what must be nearly a year now. It was a time of where I came so tantalisingly close to achieving my life's dream... Becoming a mother with my own little one. My own son-harbouring son. A memory I can't and probably will never find any hatred for, even if I utterly loathe the participant. Or... At least am trying to loathe the...
I shake my head viciously, turning my thoughts to a specific detail of the memory, "I left it at the..."
I struggle to even say, my cheeks burning hot and endlessly red as I look back the way I came. A specific outfit filling my thoughts. The single most important and special of outfits for any aelenvari deemed worthy enough of a male's attention. As I was once, as I was twice, as I am now.
An outfit that is perhaps my most ironic of all, given my usual wardrobe and insistence on certain clothing standards. It covers up so much of me, more than any other outfit I have beyond that which I've intended for colder climates and weather. And, on top of that, I'm wearing it during the moment of the most profound intimacy... Sex. Lovemaking. Baby-making.
Yet, for all of the importance it has to me, for all of the potential Seigunfrei offers... I don't move to get it, at all. I make no attempt to begin the lengthy process of what a first time for an aelenvari woman should be. No effort at all.
If I do make the effort, then I would seal my future with Seigunfrei. Make it clear to both my heart and mind once and for all that Nin is no longer my love, that he is now nothing to me. All I would have to do is go and get it, and I would not be so trapped ever again. Yet, for all of the details making the case, for all of my mental yearning for the forgetting of the parasite- All of the want to forget Nin... I make no moves to go back and get it. I just... Stay. I stay where I am, tips of my points in the mountain earth.
There is no rush to go back to my room for it. No at speed attempt to tear myself out of my current, meaningless outfit with so little care and then turning to delicately... I don't, I just don't. There's no effort to hide my body until I see Seigunfrei again, no rush with my genitals openly exposed as I happily seek my first time. I stand as I am now.
I can't even imagine it, the sight of the desired body part of his. No anticipation fills my body at the idea of him going inside of me and taking my virgin blood for himself. No anointment of his place in my life. I'm not moving to prepare myself to feel how full of liquid warmth I can be... I don't do it at all. I simply walk towards Exceptional House, ignoring the idea of a first time ritual entirely.
My mind screams away at me to do it, and for all it controls, my heart is the ruler of this body. My legs listen to it, everything listens to my heart and I do not make the attempt. I ignore the thoughts, my body putting as much distance between me and the outfit literally as my heart does emotionally. The outfit Nin risked his life to get out of Tryhpeltzweig, the rooted-flower of the ravineers far below and away from this wind-mont.
I just keep walking, never stopping, never halting. There is only one place on my mind right now. Exceptional House, and my... My... Seigunfrei. Where Seigunfrei is.