Hotaru
i'm still here but all is lost
Even the break in this dam cannot flood her. She hides beneath his chin, enveloped in his warmth all around, and suffocates the emotion within her until the threatening flame is a smoldering coal once more. Her shoulders shake sporadically as she tries to reign herself in, tormented by memories of Ru’in’s beautiful creations, his drawling voice, the softness of his eyes so alike her own. She’d never even gotten the chance to hold him again. He had died alone, for the second time, and not even had the macabre honor of his sister following in his wake to accompany him a second time. Sah’s voice is more sensation than sound at first, his chest vibrating beneath her cheek as he speaks. It pulls her from the depths, slow but insistent, and she hides in his grief and his recollections instead of her own. It’s easier somehow, even with the burn of empathy. “You were their father. No matter how it happened, it doesn’t change that.” Ru has pulled many lost children beneath her wing in her own time. They were her children as readily as any she’d birthed herself.
Pulling back just enough, the Valkyrie gently cups his cheek with one hand, wishing she could make any of this easier. “There won’t be. Safrin has extended her magic to all children in Caido - if the war threatens them at all, her magic will pull them safely away.” A comfort that she dearly hopes to share with him. Regardless of where they live, their parents, Outlander or Native, they will be safe from the war at least. “We are barely blinks in the span of their existence. It doesn’t make it right, or moral, but we don’t cry over the lives of ants or flies. How can we ask them to?” Though she is unaware of just what he’s tormented by, this at least is a cold comfort she can share.
