{Sione} The time has come...
She stared out at the fading light, the late afternoon having come on slowly. Even through the snows this side of the Dreaming, she could swear she saw the Autumn sky blazing like a furnace into a thousand scattered sands across the sky, coming to burn her up. Her whole body seemed aflame with it.
She stood in a loose gown, lessons with the Dovienya Jamaal and the Selkie lord done with for the day. They were both receptive students, learning well the lores it had taken her centuries to understand. A heritage she'd been born into and still only barely remembered.
Today she thought of a past only recently come to turn. Of a man she had called husband. Whom she'd married as the woman so many knew her as. This Countess, this simple woman just barely shrugged out of her years of awkward teenage youth. She thought of him, the Fiona baron she'd tried to love against all odds. Their time together, the hardships, the romance, the love...
Yes, there'd been love. Doomed as it was, there'd been love. Hopes of a family, and now the time was drawing near. She found she thought of him more and more. This child would be all she would have of him left. That and memory. The thought was more than enough to send her into tears; crying quietly in her solitude.
Would it have been worse had he lived? To have gotten to this point with all she knew now. With Gwydion and their love, so epic and legendary to many.
"We could have been legendary..."
His voice. So quiet and pained. He, too, filled her thoughts often these days. She wondered if he'd gotten her letter. If he'd come. When he'd come. If it'd be as awkward as before. As painful.
Pain.
She felt the first contraction twist inside her like a dull knife and the life within her turn. Her breath fell short and a thousand thoughts raced through her mind, but only one caught.
"It's time..."
She stood in a loose gown, lessons with the Dovienya Jamaal and the Selkie lord done with for the day. They were both receptive students, learning well the lores it had taken her centuries to understand. A heritage she'd been born into and still only barely remembered.
Today she thought of a past only recently come to turn. Of a man she had called husband. Whom she'd married as the woman so many knew her as. This Countess, this simple woman just barely shrugged out of her years of awkward teenage youth. She thought of him, the Fiona baron she'd tried to love against all odds. Their time together, the hardships, the romance, the love...
Yes, there'd been love. Doomed as it was, there'd been love. Hopes of a family, and now the time was drawing near. She found she thought of him more and more. This child would be all she would have of him left. That and memory. The thought was more than enough to send her into tears; crying quietly in her solitude.
Would it have been worse had he lived? To have gotten to this point with all she knew now. With Gwydion and their love, so epic and legendary to many.
"We could have been legendary..."
His voice. So quiet and pained. He, too, filled her thoughts often these days. She wondered if he'd gotten her letter. If he'd come. When he'd come. If it'd be as awkward as before. As painful.
Pain.
She felt the first contraction twist inside her like a dull knife and the life within her turn. Her breath fell short and a thousand thoughts raced through her mind, but only one caught.
"It's time..."