I want to be little again

The silence of the den that followed her mother's departure was both heavy and welcome at the same time. A bit like the idea of mystery loving company, somehow the empty, hollow silence mimicked the heavy, empty feeling that sat on her chest unyieldingly. It felt like what she deserved to have, but a small, buried part of her yearned for a time when she could have gone running to her parents to make things right. She wished so desperately that she could rewind time and go back to the days that felt like distant, fuzzy memories now–back when she was just a pup and Elysium was still just an idea and a dream. She remembered riding on her father's back everywhere they wanted to go, moving from place to place and seeing all sorts of sights all over Boreas as they went. The exact details were fuzzy or non existent now, but she remembered how simple that had felt, how care free it was. That was a feeling that felt so foreign now and she longed for it like nothing else.

The ever spiraling trail of her thoughts was jarred by the sound of heavy footfall–the soft thud of paws on stone was too heavy to be that of her mother returning to make another attempt at speaking with her or even Saracyn drifting aimlessly back into their home. Somehow she knew exactly who it was before his large paw ever rested on her shoulder through the fur blankets she was hiding beneath. His silent presence with the familiar weight of her father's paw resting on her chipped away like nothing else had at the hard, rigid shell she had built and by the time he finally called her the pet name that he had been calling her for her whole time it had begun to crack. Through all of this she hadn't cried. She had been numb in her grief, void and empty to avoid the crashing emotions that she had held just out of reach. But with her father here, after just a few moments tears began to burn in her ebony eyes and by the time she had wiggled her head out from under the covers they had begun to stream down her cheeks.

A sob caught in her throat as she reached out for him, wrapping her trembling forelegs around his torso and burying her face into his fur. All at once she wasn't Avacyn Mendacium, Matriarch of Elysium any more. She was just Ava, her dad's little firefly, clinging on to him and trembling as she finally broke down under the drowning waves of sorrow and grief. After a few long moments she realized she was no longer sure what she was grieving more–the loss of their children, the realization that she would never be a mother, or the fact that because of her choices the line of matriarchs would stop abruptly with her. What had felt like the pinnacle of their lives and their greatest achievement had come crumbling down in an instant and it all hit her at once as she sobbed into her father's chest.

"Avacyn Mendacium"