HOTARU
Hotaru had never had the chance to cradle Kiada in the age she deserved to be, but she forms it in the shape of her arms now. she is not wood or stone, her foundations are not so mighty as that. She is merely a woman now, not even a Queen, only a wandering soul in a foreign plane. Yet her arms are stronger than any God she has ever faced, her heart purer in love than fresh snow. She is unbreakable because Kiada makes her so. Though it was never what they were to each other, they fit together in the same shapes of mother and daughter, and in that she finds a strength that will never falter or fail. Tears soak into her dress, hot on her skin, and still she only murmurs her senseless comfort. There is room in her arms for all the pieces that shatter off Kiada. There is space in her palms for her weathered heart. Though Hotaru's body is small, the weight she is capable of carrying, the amount she can hold, only grows exponentially to fit what Kiada places upon her.
Only when she withdraws does Hotaru gaze into her eyes, the fractured blue of her gaze with a heartbreak the Valkyrie knows too well. It was never something she had wished upon Kiada. How much more had she failed in the time between their arrivals? She should have been here, a shield, a mentor to the young girl. Why? Why had they not brought her sooner? She could have spared this. Would have sacrificed herself so quickly to ensure Kiada did not suffer so deeply.
Her eyes flicker down to the bronze ring on Kiada's finger as she buries her face in her hands, and it's only another dagger to her heart. While Kiada cannot see, her own eyes fall closed, letting the agony of her confirmed suspicions crash over her. As unstoppable and fatal as a tsunami. Drowning in the ocean of her own sorrow and loss. But it is a loss that is not fresh for her, not as it is for Kiada. So when the name falls from her lips as if forcefully pulled free, Hotaru opens her eyes. There is a deep, aching void of sorrow in her beautiful eyes. Perhaps they are glassy, but tears do not fall free. Instead she brings her hand to Kiada, pulls her in by the nape and presses a firm kiss to her brow. It lingers for long moments, her own face fractured with agony.
She does not need to see your grief, not when her own is so fresh.
Pulling away, Hotaru gives a broken smile, understanding written all over her face. "He loved you," she says quietly, with the unshakable truth that only a mother could have regarding their child's innermost thoughts and feelings. "And he would never want to see your tears." Her palms rise to brush them away, cupping the red-stained face before her. "I...there are no words for the pain of losing him," she chokes, a single tear streaking down her own cheek, lips trembling with the force of a repeated loss she had never anticipated. And I wasn't here. I wasn't here. I wasn't here for either of them.
"But you listen to me, child." She ignores the tear as it drips off her cheek, gaze intent and offering her own strength. "No matter where he is, in this life or the next. No matter how little time you and I had with him, he is with us always." One hand drops to clutch the one with Kiada's ring, the bronze fox, and she runs a shaking fingertip across it without letting herself gaze upon it. "Ru'in was as selfless as any boy could be. He loved you so deeply, he would never have taken marrying you lightly. Do you understand me? Grieve him, mourn him, remember every moment you spent at his side. But you know, just as I do, that no matter how impossible it feels...he would want your joy, not your tears." Though her mouth curves into a smile, her own tears fall, silent and regal. In many ways Kiada had been so much closer to Ru'in than she, a loss she feels like a slow-burning fire in her breast that tucks smog into her throat and makes it hard to breathe. She would have been a perfect daughter, the first partner of one of her mated children. There is so much lost here, so much potential that would never see fruition, and it magnifies the grief tenfold.
Breaking, she draws Kiada back into her arms to conceal the tears as they hasten down her cheeks. But she is familiar with this grief, this loss. Has lost all of her children, her parents, her twin, her bonded. Her breaths are scarcely hitched, even as it feels as if her very soul is breaking apart. I should have been here to save him. To protect him. I'm his mother, I should have been the one to die. Why, out of everyone who deserved it so much more, was I the one to live? Hotaru rocks them gently on the couch, a small hitch of her breath the closest she can get to a sob. She cannot manage more. As a mother she will not let herself fall any farther, not when she has to keep Kiada afloat. "Life is cruel, that we survive past him," she says in a broken whisper. "But we do live. And we cannot squander that gift."
i'm the little lightning girl
living electricity
a lightning bolt in human form
