ORIGIN - Ensconce

Nemesis' den was more empty than usual as of late. Perhaps it is because of the mother's absence, but even the slow moving daughter finds herself sleeper and sleeper by the day. A drifting feeling washes over the child, and one day, when no one is around, the heat in the child's spirit seems to flicker and die out. The babe does not cease to be, but slowly, the gem on her shell grows over the casing, over her head, and wraps around her like a blanket, leaving the den cold and lonesome. When her mother arrives, there is a sense of quiet, dreadful panic, but no fuss is made over the child. It takes perhaps days, even a week, before the mother is willing to speak of her failures, though one thing is for certain: Now that the hearth of Nemesis' home has gone to sleep for winter, no flames grace this cold, hay strewn floor for a tremendous time.

Nemesis

Nemesis had failed her daughter. She didn't know what happened-- no one spoke of anything happening in Monoceros, no one breathed a word of a battle or of blood. There was no sign, even, of injury or scuffle... Just one day, she returned, and her daughter was gone. Sure, the stone was still there. Bigger than ever, aggrandized into a solid blue wall that she could press up against. If she lay against it long enough, she could feel the warmth deep inside-- but otherwise, it was deathly cold in her den.

When should she tell Magdalena? She knew she had to-- in a way, she considered the Princess a mother of Hestia as well... At the very least an aunt, and if anything happened to Nemesis' nephew...s? She would want to know. She would demand to know. There was the chance that the Princess didn't care, of course, but Nemesis didn't want to find out. Instead, she started to spend more and more time out with the Herbivores-- out with the stag and her other children. Feverfew and Deadnettle. They were becoming stronger by the day, marred with scars of their training. Yes, the fires bit and stung, but her children were fighters just like her and she knew they could handle it. They hadn't complained to her, anyway.

Today-- however-- Nemesis spent her day cooped up with the shell of Hestia. She was feeling absolutely dreadful, a coldness in her body that she couldn't shake. Perhaps this was what it like to feel ill, but it was more than that. She was starting to worry she would never see Hestia again. Sure, she had come back after crystallizing again, but... Hestia, oh, it had taken her so long to come out the first time. The trinoceros felt tears trickle down her face as she pressed her cheek to the stone. What had she done wrong? How had she failed her daughter?

table by shax

This time, Magdalena had to tell her children to remain in the den. Odyssey was falling into the uncomfortable habit of asking to follow Magdalena where ever she went, and while Magdalena knew that she could put the child in their place if they started to intervene with Magdalena's business, she was beginning to find agitation in the child's ceaseless presence. Not the mention the added annoyance of Iliad being nigh inseparable from her child. How could she expect Odyssey to succeed with a leech clinging to their side, taking their attention, giving them warmth and love?

Perhaps that was where Magdalena had failed too, in love. She'd lost Delphine for that reason, she thought. She had abandoned the horse when Baratheon nearly killed her, and she had expressed affection for others without explicitly offering the same to Delphine, and back then, Magdalena had been capable of love. There were murmurings of it in her chest and thoughts, knowing that she adored the horse, so helpless, so willful to learn, grow, survive. Yet even with the presence of that vital feeling, she had failed, and that failure sapped her of the ability to forge more. She was left with only a hollow warmth for everyone else.

Or maybe that feeling still stirred, and she just didn't know how to access it, or identify it, or what to do with it. She was afraid that extending it would make them leave, even though she knew her Fire would never, even though she knew Hestia was hesitant to leave the den, even though she knew Odyssey vied for her love the same way Magdalena had for Booker and Delphine. It was a fear that she couldn't shake. It was one that needed soothing, even if she would never admit it; that was why her elegant paws had led her through the platforms and trails to the den of her Fire and the Tiny Fire, expecting to feel the warmth of at least one of them, smile, and hear the plaintive greeting of the child.

But when she arrived, she was met with nothing. There was a foreign coldness that occupied the space that Magdalena was unaccustomed to, even as she heard the shuffling of a massive form and knew inherently that her Nemesis was already here. "My Fire." Magdalena cooed, lingering at the entrance, and her gentle eyes begged the question: where had Hestia gone?

@Nemesis

Nemesis

Nemesis rose her head, swinging the massive crown so that three sharp points all angled towards the voice of that wonderful, beautiful Princess in her den's entrance. Her rich ultramarine eyes, blobbed with wetness, blinked once to try and clear her vision. She knew it was the borzoi from the first breath of a word, but she struggled to see much more than a lazy smudge of dusty ivory in the center of her gaze.

"Princess," she echoed back, voice hollow. What was there to say? She felt an instinct to bring warmth, to wrap her heat around the canine and welcome her inside-- but she had no will to do so. The room remained cold, empty-- and as soon as the words faded from her lips, the dull droning roar of the winds outside left the den feeling silent and still.

After a moment, the trinoceros found some words. The stumbled from her mouth, a weak chuckle forcing them from her breath. "She is too much like me," she fretted, rising to her feet. Her body continued to press close to the brilliant iolite wall, though she dare not lean any of her weight into it. Her pale grey skin was stained like damp clay down her cheeks, and she could taste the salt on her tongue. Her weeping was silent, even still, as though she was trying to hide it all.

table by shax

Her heart had always been on the defensive, but as she heard the trino's hollow voice resonate from deep within the den, she felt it shudder and that wall of ice had cracked. Everything in her felt as though it melted, opening up a rare and vulnerable trench that Magdalena often kept guarded, even around Nemesis. It was no common occasion that it had even revealed itself, but the brokenness of her Fire's voice had her quick to sweep in and envelope the trino. Her paws shuffled, crossing the distance between herself and the trino just as Nemesis had begun to rise, speaking with partial, deadened laughter, as if there was any amusement to be drawn from this tragedy - a tragedy as she had come to know it, sensing the hybrid's presence beyond a cold wall of stone. A fire burned somewhere within, but it was tame and withdrawn, reminding her of when Nemesis had gone. She was in her chrysalis, and something resonated inside of Magdalena, forlorn.

Magdalena sucked in a slow breath and turned all of her attention to Nemesis, touching her nose to the trino's large nose horn. "You were strong enough to break free." Magdalena answered, expecting it to be only truth that her factual chords could spin. "As is she." There was life here, she could feel it, and if what Nemesis had said was true, then Hestia would one day break free from her chamber as well. Perhaps different... but still Hestia. Only... as the words left her lips, she found herself startled by how cool they had been. Magdalena's brow twinged. As rigid as Magdalena wanted to remain - hard and strong, a logical voice in a slurry of despair - her reasoning was all too quickly complimented by the easing of her body against Nemesis' nose, her shoulders slumping.

She had analyzed the sound of her own voice, and she knew it to be denial, a lie. She wanted to reassure Nemesis, and she found herself clamoring over the reality of their loss instead. "Oh, my Fire. I am sorry." The dog breathed after a moment, feeling hesitation tug at her throat; yet she knew that she was safe to open here. She didn't know what else she could do, what else she could say to reassure Nemesis, because now she was drawn back to when the trino had retreated. How lost she had felt, how afraid; and how it was seeping in now, for fear of losing darling Hestia, for fear of not being strong enough to be the voice of reason.

@Nemesis

Nemesis

Light paws shuffled closer, the blur coming into and out of focus as the borzoi approached. Nemesis felt the weak tug of a smile on her cheeks, closing her eyes as her ears coned towards Magdalena's breath, soft and stirring against her face. A cold nose touched against her horn and words spilled around them and brushed against her skin, drawing her out of her worry and into the comfort of her Princess.

The canine pressed into her snout and she nuzzled, soft and carefully, against the wispy, delicate fur of her love. The cold harshness of her factual words were more comforting than perhaps anyone would expect-- Nemesis simply knew it as how her Princess was, and along side the touch it was reassuring even if she had her fears. Her child would come, surely, once she was ready. The brutish trinoceros clung to this hope once more, encouraged by Magdalena even as the borzoi found herself doubting it-- and more words, gentle, just for her, came brushing across her like the most delicate of touches.

Truth be told, Nemesis was choking on her own words. She didn't know what to say, if anything was even appropriate to say-- but she wanted her Maggs to stay there with her, as long as she could bare, so selfishly clinging to the solid comfort of the woman she adored. "... I love you," the words escaped her before she could reconsider them, and more nervous then she had ever been, she reached her head forward, to draw the borzoi under her neck, to cradle her with her softest, most vulnerable skin.

Please don't go, she pleaded, silently, so afraid in that moment with one loss that more with come-- something that had never happened to her. She had never lost anyone, anything. It was a failure, and she could hardly cope. If she couldn't protect Hestia, the precious, slowsteping child who never left home, then how could she protect everyone else? Terror seizing her into a state of immobility, she could only beg for her princess to remain, if only until the lull of sleep washed away the fear for a while.

table by shax

Her internal thoughts were at war with one another, torn between believing that Hestia would emerge and wondering, fearing for the worst, that something might have changed, or that her chrysalis would fail. If Nemesis' retreat was anything to go by, then she would emerge as good as new. And yet what if something happened, leaving them waiting for the hybrid to emerge forever - what if she never did step foot outside of that shell again, and all the hope and encouragement Magdalena had dredged up from her black heart was left suspended? What if she never did come back, and it broke Nemesis; what if she was left to watch her companion wilt under the death of her loved one?

Death had never been a concern. But Magdalena adored Hestia, and Magdalena needed Nemesis, in a way that she couldn't say that she needed anybody else. It was all she wanted to repair the tattered stitching in the weaving between them, the three of them; to see Nemesis happy again. Happy and loud and wild, not like this. Her eyes had slowly closed, digging through everything she knew in attempt to find a remedy, but it was Nemesis' voice to draw her back out again. Back into the open air where she was faced with reality again. I love you.

Strange words she had never heard before. Or at least, never taken into consideration, never taken to heart. Had anybody ever told her they loved her? They'd have no reason, after all, Magdalena was cold and conniving and she didn't love anybody else. She was not a creature meant to reciprocate love. She liked it better that way.

Turmoil was a storm inside of her heart, and Nemesis reached forward, drawing Magdalena into the vulnerable warmth of her throat. The dog was stunned if only for a moment, and then she conceded, nestling against the trino's chest and neck. She couldn't deny that her warmth was comforting, and the thrumming of her heart deep in the cage of her breast, and her rhythmic breathing. Guilt nagged at the fringes of her mind. But Nemesis needed this. And maybe Magdalena did too, in a convoluted kind of way, an affirmation that she wasn't so alone in this dreary narrow life of hers. So that she could say at least somebody had loved her, and at least Magdalena had done the same. If at some point she'd ever wanted to be vindicated, for somebody to forgive the crookedness of her ways, to see that she wasn't a monster - but she is - at least, then, she would have Nemesis.

"I love you as well." Magdalena whispered and curled against the skin of the trino, resting her head against her collar bone and listening. It was like poison that darkened her insides, but those words had absolved her of it, at least a little bit. It may have stung her tongue and burned her teeth as it came up, but she was free of it now, and she allowed herself to rest easy. Her eyes stay closed and she shoved the thought of Hestia aside, content to lay in the adoration of her companion, content with what little remission the confession had given her.

fade out...? @Nemesis

Nemesis

Whether it was her grief or the dog's soft, kind words that inebriated the rhinoceros, she didn't care. Her heavy body slowly sunk to the ground once more, summoning a warmth for the pair of them, just for Magdalena, so she could be comfortable. As long as she stayed, Nemesis could protect her and hold her close, no matter what went wrong, she could fight...

The massive woman let the words echo around in her mind. The Princess loved her back, however unlikely it had been, the words wrapped around her like a blanket. She was still not at ease, her dark blue eyes flashing to the just as dark gemstone at her side, but she did not have to feel peace to be comforted, to be loved.

She had no idea what she had done for Magdalena to love her, but everything seemed to melt away to the soft lullaby of their breaths and heartbeats, slow and quiet in the lonely chamber.

Thank you, my Princess... The knight whispered, perhaps the words never escaping her lips, as everything seemed to fade away into a cozy, gentle slumber. Everything would be okay, even if nothing was.

table by shax

;; nem exit <3