let's hear the sound of madness

and the crown it weighs heavy

There is a schism, a softening in his face as Cahira watches him, watery proclamations overflowing into a vivid exuberance as bright as the sun, and for a moment all of her staggered thoughts capsize into recollection and she sees him, knows why his pinions and rapiers remind her of a peculiar pair, he carries the likeness of her bleary impression inside her head and oh, how she ought to have seen at once… But he quavers and dissolves like the warmth in her limbs as Dallilja speaks and though she longs to contradict, to inform this youth her mother is well and alive, even though she is in Azarel’s clutches, how she’s wrong. She’s wrong because mother isn’t dead, she couldn’t be dead, and even as she scrutinizes them (weak-kneed) Cahira knows Dallilja isn’t the one unsound, she is. Her heart threatens to drown, she sinks into an abyss as devouring as the shades around them and her lungs writhe for air, and then she’s splintering, too. “But… she was alive," her tone beseeches and for a mere moment she feels unreasonably bitter, at Delinne, at her mother for leaving her like this, then she slumps with faint-hearted resignation and her cheeks smolder with shame at the idea. The lavaliere of sapphire around her crown feels like iron, worn into her skin where it brushes the bridge of her nose, and she swallows.

She swears to herself she won’t weep, and then she violates her word when the girl, her sibling, seeks mercy. “What must you be forgiven for? Peace. You will find no malice with me," Cahira replies, and though her voice never falters, it is plainly damp, “But if I must suffer this loss, I will learn to love you as well," and she says this as a oath, a insurance of her care. Maneuvering with leaden hooves towards her nephew, she smiles, though it is feeble and sallow she tries and finds she means it, and murmurs gently, “Shahrokh.” The moniker Dallilja has given, she fancies it is his name, “You remind me of her. Your mother, I ought to have known.” She has many things to say, how she wishes she knew Destry better, where she is, though the anguish she saw in his face the moment he spoke of the portal, the snarling rip in time bridles her tongue. "What happened?"

@Dallilja @Shahrokh

'till it's banging on my eyelids