Good Morning, Little Ones!
Thank you to Mel, Jill, and Dani!
.: 38 :.
She was never the same after she returned from the sea.
No one knew what happened to her, what she had seen or done, but one thing was certain, something happened to her that day. Something she could not overcome.
She ignored her child—the babe who she had once doted on every waking hour. Scarcely could she even look upon it after that day.
She retreated into herself, cloaking herself in a shroud of weariness and despair. She would not speak; she would not eat, but frequently, she could be found weeping bitter tears.
As the full moon neared, she grew more and more distraught. She screamed terror in the night, and in the morning, she sat at the window, ghosts in her vacant eyes. Sometimes, only sometimes, she'd murmur something, too low to be overheard, and sometimes great tears would roll down her cheeks, dripping onto the shawl she kept wrapped around her shoulders. No one knew what to do for her.
The night of the full moon, she went to her child, sleeping peacefully wrapped up in a blanket she'd made in the days when she was still swollen with life and hope.
She took the sleeping babe into her arms, tears leaking down her face and landing on the perfect porcelain skin of the baby. Without a word, she took the babe from the house and entered the woods.
Her steps were heavy as she wound the familiar path through the trees. Her lover was there in the clearing, waiting for her, and when he saw his love with their child in her arms, he fell to his knees.
Oh stars above.He was overcome.
She met her lover in the glen, wordlessly offering him the child. He took the babe into his arms, and a love unlike anything he'd ever known was born in him.
"She is everything," he told his lover. "She will be our everything."
She tried not to cry as he spoke, but tears slipped past her eyes, landing on her trembling lips.
"She can free you," she said softly, her voice shaking. Her lover looked up at her. "She can grant you the freedom you desire."
Her lover was struck mute by this.
"Is this still your desire?" she asked.
He looked down at his child. "More than anything," he whispered.
The woman's silent tears grew stronger.
"Very well," she whispered, and from her skirts, she pulled out a wicked blade. Her lover, so lost in the eyes of his beloved child, didn't see the glint of the silver as it hung in the air, nor the flash of it as it came down and pierced his child's heart.
It wasn't until her blood was on his hands, did he look up at his beloved. Shock, betrayal, and anger roiling in him into a fury too black to name.
"A soul for a soul," she told him, her words breaking with her sobs. "A love greater than any, sacrificed. That is the price of your freedom."