her children never called her cold, and the fact that they never called her cold was hidden behind ruffled-feather smiles and soft huffs of forgebreath laughter. she was the flamecaller, mistress of the forge, maker of the beating veins beneath the earth. in no way could one call her cold.
when a coatl had tired eyes and singed drooping feathertips, their companions would hum their condolences. “you can’t fly too close to the sun,” they’d admonish. “we are made of fire, but that just means we can be smothered all the more easily.” the coatl nods, and puts away the smoldering molten remnants of whatever project had brought their mother’s attention, usually for good.
sometimes, they fight back.
“i don’t understand!” he screams at her, his primaries flaring up in a challenging display. “there is no reason we should be at the mercy of the kindness of others--what if kindness isn’t an option? talona would slaughter us all, we shouldn’t have to be forced to rely on anyone but ourselves for our safety!” his voice, so accustomed to singing and warbling, cracks and tears at the harsh violence of his shouting. the flamecaller stares at him, not impassively, but her expression does not change.
it takes her so much effort for that singular expression that she cannot even begin to form words. she hopes that the delay in her response reads as a dignified, deific pause, and that her tight throat loosens in the echoes of the dormant cave.
“i did not make you to make me machinations of war,” she says. “leave the mirrors and the wildclaws to their games of bloodshed and battle. you were not built for the fields of war, and i shall not allow an attempt against your nature.”
“i don’t understand!” he screams again. “you didn’t make us to fight, but we might have to! what will happen if the armies march on us here and slaughter us, smash our eggs with the corpses of ourselves? what will you say to our broken, helpless bodies then?”
she is somewhere else, then. not in a cramped forgeworks, but upon her molten throne, her sobs clawing out her chest like a horde of daggers shredding her heart. she feels each and every child of her hubris die, first one by one, then in a great flood, and then there is a horrific, terrible silence--not one of a lack of bloodshed, but of an absence of any blood to be shed. she keens, and wails, and she swears to herself then and there: she would not make machinations of war again. not even if the very warden himself were to march upon her throne.
and when her tears stop flowing, and when her throat no longer aches with crying, she makes the first of the coatls from the droplets of molten magma that fell from her, and she sings into them all her hopes, her dreams, her prayers.
you will be kind. you will be soft. you will sing songs of love. you...will be loved.
tangentwithtanner
jacobvanloon
andulkaphoto
2087
pixelskylines
origamiaround
