Little Fiery One

Manea watched Alastor closely as he limped into the den, glancing at the still open wounds that littered his body, and understood what the commotion was now as Irilyth lingered in the doorway at the ready to treat him if given the chance. She could tell from the hard, empty look on Alastor's face that he wouldn't allow Irilyth to touch him, at least not right now, she she glanced toward her hand maiden and gently motioned her away with her paw. Perhaps once he calmed down a bit she would be able to convince him to let Irilyth patch his wounds. For now her tired gaze turned back up to Alastor as he loomed over them, his obsidian gaze on their daughter. She was at least glad to know that he had taken care of the burial of their other children even though she was hurt that she hadn't been allowed to take part in it. She hadn't expected that he would have done anything bad with their tiny corpses, but it at least explained why he had taken them with him. The insistence that she didn't care that they were somewhere nice and peaceful hit her like a knife and her eyes narrowed in exhausted frustration, but she bit her tongue for the moment instead of lashing out at him right away.

He asked about the girl's name while his large ebony paw reached for their girl and she had to fight the instinct to slap his paw away, watching him like a hawk as he went to stroke her back. She knew he was unstable right now and she could picture the havoc he wrecked across whatever part of Boreas he had gone to just from looking at his current physical state, but if there was one thing Manea felt she could always trust him with it was their children. "I haven't named her," she told him, her voice rough from the untold hours she had been crying on and off throughout the day. A shaky sigh left her as she tried and mostly failed to settle her anger and the still overwhelming grief and frustration that hung over her like a bolder just waiting to tip and go rolling down a cliffside. "I couldn't name her without you." If he hadn't come back then she supposed she wouldn't have had a choice, but she didn't want to name this girl on her own. She didn't want to live this life on her own. Without him half of her world was missing and she couldn't imagine existing that way.

Even still, him saying that she didn't care still stung like an open wound and she could hardly look at him without wanting to grab him and shake him and force him to look into her bloodshot eyes and see how much this broke and shattered her. "How dare you say that I don't care?" she finally let herself say, her tone quiet and hard. "What, do you think I wanted to kill our children? That I enjoyed it?" Her anger over took most every other emotion like a cleansing fire, angry at him for not understanding that she was grieving just as deeply, angry at the laws she was born to uphold, angry at the expectations of every one of her family members that looked to her to be the example. The weight on her shoulders was tremendous and she had always depended on Alastor to help support her when the strain became too great. Now it felt like he had pulled that support out from under her and added more weight on top of it.

She did smack his paw away from their daughter then, her shoulders trembling with her anger and her sorrow, forcing him to look at her and the haggard look she wore, exhausted from the birth she went through, the emotional toil of it all, and the thought that by tomorrow she would have wolves demanding answers if she continued to hide in the sanctuary that was their den. She was holding on by a thread and unlike him she didn't have the luxury of being able to storm off and tear apart the world to vent her anger at this unfair situation. She had to stay here, feed and protect this tiny, defenseless girl, and grapple with this harsh reality on her own. "I had to do it," she insisted quietly, her heart wrenching in her chest. "I had to do it for her. To make sure her soul was whole and intact, that she'd be welcomed and accepted by my family... So that I wouldn't be excommunicated from my family like my mother, so I can continue to live with our children and maintain this life we've built." Her gaze begged him to understand and to listen, but she honestly felt like she was fighting an uphill battle and she wasn't sure she had the energy to do it. "I'm the Matriarch. All of their eyes are on me. If I fail and fall apart then everything around us crumbles."

"Manea Mendacium"