Heart of Leoth: [HAITUS]

Part XIV ~ Theodan

He awoke with a quiet start, body slumped against the entrance to the Goddess's temple and the uneasy sense that he was not alone. Yet when he looked around him the grove was quiet and clear, not even a rustle of leaves broke the dark silence. A windless, airless, nothing that had always cemented this place as not quite of the mortal realm.

It had felt as though he'd closed his eyes for a only a few moments but above him the sky was black and the moon a beacon for the night that had fallen upon Leoth as he slept.

Under its cool glow the night air tinged with its familiar sweetness. The sweetness of home, the sweetness that called to his flesh and blood and bone. He hated leaving Leoth but the contentment that filled his body on his return was always the reward. The sweet moon-infused air bled into his lungs and he soaked it in for a few stolen moments. That contentment. For it was soon chased away by a bleak hopelessness. For it had failed, then. His plan. His attempt to awaken this thing - this gift - that had lain dormant inside him. It slept still.

The moment the thought solidified in his mind, he felt it. A prickling across his neck. The distinct presence of something...other he'd felt upon waking growing stronger.

A sound behind him had him on his feet in an instant, sword unsheathed and ready. He turned to face the inside of the temple. The moon's glow lit the Goddess's sculpture in a spill of pale blue but everything else was dark, silent.

He lowered the hand that held his steel blade and turned slowly, back to face the clearing. His breath caught like fire in his throat, his heart turning to stone in his chest as he drank in the female figure standing there. She stood in the centre of the grove, still, hair blowing gently around her though he no wind blew through the clearing. She wore the dress he had given to Fara the day Paeris had come for him, and it fit her as it should have. Skimming the gentle curves and long limbs. She was as beautiful as he remembered. She was exactly as he remembered.

From somewhere he found his voice. Though at that moment it sounded nothing like his own. It sounded small as a child's.

"Mother?"

She smiled, soft and close-lipped, sadness moving into her eyes as she gazed up at him where he still stood atop the temple steps.

"Inasa," she whispered. His heart shuddered with the name. He had buried it. Forgotten it in the grief of his mind. Little love. Had she really called him that once? Before she'd called him darkness and destruction had it been Inasa. His head felt light as he stood there. "Come to me," she said softly.

His hands and legs shook as he staggered towards her, down the steps and onto the grass. His blood pounded between his ears, in his chest, and through his veins. A roar. Like the midst of battle.

He took a step closer, then another, terrified yet unable to stop his feet from moving. That roar grew stronger the closer he got to the presence of his mother, to Ishilde of the Twelve, blood rushing wildy inside him. It felt like power. Quiet and ancient. It moved towards him as he moved toward it, wrapping itself around him, enveloping him. Then it pulled him to his knees.

Tears swam in his vision as he stared down at the grass, unable to lift his head to look up at her. When she reached out and tipped his head up, her touch was cold. But then he remembered she had always been so. He blinked open his eyes to look at her and he felt the tears burning in them, making his vision gauzy and unfocussed.

She looked at him with love. Not fear and hate. Gods, how had he forgotten she'd once looked at him like that? How had he forgotten that it had not always been as it had been those last moons before her death. There had been a time when she had held him and sang to him; when she had kissed away the grazes on his knees, and wiped the tears from his eyes. There had been a time when she had loved him. When she had called him Inasa.