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• quiet darkness. This was what she should have gotten from the start. It was what she deserved. Nothing but cold against her skin and the dull, mindless rumble of the wind.

Someone grabbed her by the wrists and pulled her hands away from her ears.

"You listen to her, Aisa!" Dorin yelled into her face. She refused to open her eyes, but she could feel his hot breath brushing the tip of her nose. "This is why you came out here, isn't it!? You didn't fight so hard just to stand here with your eyes shut and your fingers in your ears, did you!? Open them! I said open -"

He tried to physically pry her eyelids open and she batted him away with a flurry of hysterical slaps, screaming and crying all at the same time, not wanting any of it, just wanting to be left alone. She heard him fall to the snow with a muffled "Oof!" but she still wouldn't open her eyes. She couldn't.

"Mother! Mother!"

That voice. It was the same voice she had heard every day for so many years. It was so beautiful, but she had taken it for granted. She had made it scream, made it cry, made it plead for mercy. But the worst thing... the absolute worst thing...

When that voice told her it loved her, she had met it with silence.

*

Where did that child come from!? Taberah thought, both shocked and angry.

Renna took in a huge gulp of freezing air and screamed as loud as she could: "Mother!! Motheeer!!"

Taberah scooped her up from behind, wrenching her away from the wall. "Stop it, Renna!"

"But it's my mother!"

'My mother'? Those words sparked a terrible fury in her heart. "She stopped being your mother the moment she threw you away!"

"But I'm still her daughter!"

Renna calling that despicable creature her mother hurt Taberah in ways she could barely comprehend, but even that pain was nothing compared to what she felt upon hearing this child refer to herself as that creature's daughter. The first was a simple fact. Aisa was Renna's mother, and nothing could change that. It was outside them both. But the second... calling herself Aisa's 'daughter', that was something the child chose to do herself, a label she imposed on herself, a way of seeing herself, a state of being herself. She could have cut all ties. Even if Aisa was still her mother, she could have chosen not to be her daughter anymore, because that was the one thing she had control over, the one thing no one else could take away from her - the right to choose who she was. But if she still had some poisonous connection to that creature in the pass, the monster that had put its claws to her face, was it not Taberah's duty to break that hold, to sever any and all bonds that still stuck them to each other like a spider's threads?

They were frozen - Taberah, holding Renna in her arms, and Renna, reaching for the wall, her feet dangling in the air.

"Aisa threw you away like a piece of trash, but I will never let you go!" Taberah said. "I will be a mother to you! That means you're my daughter, not hers! That bitch doesn't deserve to have a daughter!"

"But she does have a daughter!" Renna insisted, fighting and kicking. "Please, Taberah-Kai! Let me go!"

"No! You shouldn't even be here!" Taberah jerked her further and further away from the edge of the wall, not allowing her feet to touch the walkway. It was her duty to keep her child safe from harm. She wouldn't let that Aisa woman or anyone else lay a finger on her! This time she would do it right.

This time she would save her baby girl.

"Let me go!" Renna pleaded. "Taberah-Kai, please! Let me talk to her! I need to talk to her!"

"You need to be safe and warm..." Taberah muttered under her breath. "You need a loving family, a mother and a father who will take care of you..."

"SHE NEVER GAVE ME AN ANSWER!!" Renna bellowed and bit down on Taberah's forearm. Truth be told, Taberah was more amazed at the volume those tiny lungs could achieve than the searing pinpricks of pain that were the teeth digging into her flesh.

"Renna?"

A warm trickle of blood flowed down her arm and pattered onto the walkway. Who could have guessed that the first blood of this final conflict would be drawn by the most innocent one of them all?

A warm hand came down on her shoulder, gripping tightly. It was Sorrin, a small frown cresting his weathered brow. "Let her go."

"But she's -"

"She never got to make her peace. Don't deny her this last chance."

Taberah bared her fangs without even realising it. "After what she did, that... that woman down there doesn't deserve to look at her, let alone speak to her!"

"Maybe so," Sorrin conceded. "But what about Renna's wishes? Doesn't she have the right to speak to the one who abandoned her, if that's what she truly wants?"

"No! I'm supposed to protect her, Sorrin! I'm supposed to keep her safe!"

"Taberah..."

"I won't let anything happen to her, Sorrin! Don't you understand!? I finally found her! I found her in the snow! I found her! I found her! I -"

Sorrin had never raised his hand to her in all the years they had been together, not even once. That was why the slap caught her completely off guard. It wasn't a hard slap. It barely even shifted her cheek, but the noise his palm made against her flesh, that soft clap, was louder than a thunder strike to her ears. Renna immediately stopped her struggling and craned her neck to see what had happened.

Sorrin's open hand was still hovering in mid-air, shaking ever so slightly.

"Sorrin? Did you just...?"

He gently put his hands on her shoulders and leaned in close to whisper something she already knew, but it hit her even harder than the first and only strike she had ever received by his hand. "She is not Vallah."

On the outside, she had gone completely numb. She could not feel Sorrin's hands on her shoulders or even the snow blowing against her face. She could not feel Renna's weight against her arm or the tiny puncture marks the girl had left in her skin. But on the inside, where it counts, she felt as though she had been cleaved wide open.

She is not Vallah.

"I... I know she isn't..."

Vallah is dead.

"I was just... Oh, Sorrin..."

He pulled her in close, and with Renna between them, it turned it into the strangest three-way embrace ever. "I know, Tabby. It's okay. I'm sorry I hit you. I love you."

Renna is not Vallah.

Taberah hugged him back, feeling the warmth of her tears flowing down her cheek just as her blood was flowing down her arm. "I love you, too, Sorrin."

"Then let her go. It's just for a little while."

Renna is not my daughter.

"Renna?"

And she never will be.

She looked up with those gorgeous blue eyes of hers, filled to the brim with unspilled tears. There was a tiny spot of blood in the corner of her mouth.

Taberah put her down, but did not immediately release her grip. She turned it into an embrace instead, folding her arms around her slender body and holding her tight.

"No matter what happens," she whispered, "I will always be there to look out for you, okay?" She wanted to say more than that. She wanted to tell this child that she loved her very, very much, that even if she couldn't be a mother to her by birth, she would always be a mother to her in spirit and in heart. But...

Did she have any right to? She had failed to protect her child once before, what if she failed again?

It was then that she felt the tears, tears that were not her own, seeping through her fur and burning against her skin.

Renna looked up, and despite everything, despite all the pain and sorrow and misery she had to fight through to make it this far, she was still pure. She was still Renna.

"I love you, Taberah-Kai," she whispered. "Thank you."

Taberah smiled. It was impossible not to. "I love you, too, child. Now go on. Say what you need to say. I'll be right behind you."

And with that...

Taberah let her go.