don't care to settle in

a dog will look down when they have done wrong

In places like these she wishes she were more like her mother. The Raven Queen, the queen of deception and power and impossibilities. Weaver has always lacked the sharp edge of her mother, has always lacked the pretty words and gone straight for the heart of it. Straia had danced around the truth, had weaved beautiful pictures in your mind without ever really lying. Kaos had done the same and she should have seen it, should have understood what he meant because she spoke as her mother had. Ah, but Weaver was too concerned with the threats standing right in front of her, too concerned with the things she could fight than with what they might really be saying. Weaver was her mother’s daughter, yes, but Weaver was not her mother.

There are old words on the black obelisks, but she has no hope of reading them. Even if the words weren’t washed away by time and relentless rain, they were in a language she did not know and could not read. And even still, if all those things were not true, would she even know what they said? What they really, truly said? Kaos had promised to save, he had promised peace, and he delivered on those things but she’d never once understood in what way he meant to deliver. Her mother, however, would have known. Her mother would have read right through his words to understand his true meaning because his language and hers were the same. They were beautiful languages that lived just outside Weaver’s grasp.

Erebos moves away from the black rocks before she can close the distance enough to even call his name. Something calls to him and she’s still too far away to know just what it is, but as she follows him, she begins to feel it too. Something pulls her to follow him, something more than just her desire to see him, to feel like maybe things will go back to some version of normal in this place where she can call him General and they can rip each other to shreds on and off the battlefield. They could dream and scheme and make something great, make some name of whatever home they found to become the Basin again, or to become something like the Basin, because how could they ever replace what they lost?

Raven caws at her, stronger and more urgent than he’s managed since coming here. Warning pulses in their bond, and though it’s a weak sensation, she’s so startled by anything at all coming from it that the trance lifts long enough for her to remember that Erebos is here and she calls his name. He replies, asking how she is and she has to laugh at that, because how does anyone answer that question now? Even resilient, determined, unbreakable Weaver has her tipping point and she can’t bring herself to lie or pretend that she’s okay.

Her hesitation is all the Rift needs, and the flowers pull at her attention again. She turns her eyes back to the blooms, to the place where they have both ended up when certainly, surely, they would have both gone to the mountain’s summit instead. She shakes her head, trying to clear it, clinging to the thought that neither of them would choose a lake over the frozen mountain nearby. “What do you think this place is?” she asks, not answering his question, her voice a little distance as she looks at the water, vaguely aware that something lingers below the surface.

She is not afraid. Weaver is never afraid. There are perks to being somewhat immortal, and fearlessness is one of them, though recklessness is it’s dangerous cousin. “What do you think happens if we touch the flowers?” She sticks a hoof out, ready to touch one, but she doesn’t quite. Raven is trying to scream through their bond and though it’s distant, it keeps her grounded enough to remember that Erebos is far more capable of dying than she. She turns her amber eyes to him, looking for permission to proceed, looking to see if he’ll do it instead. She can throw her own life away easily, but still, she cannot risk his.

- weaver -

but a snake will look you right in the eyes.

@Erebos