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On a breezy, cool morning, everything felt too still in the whipping, winter winds of the Silken Squall.
A mother can feel when something is off. She felt it as she stirred early in the morning, huddling in on herself a little extra as she began to brew her morning tea while waiting for her husband to rise. She felt it in the quiet of the dawn, accompanied only by the sounds of a sizzling kettle and wind against the silks of the yurt. She felt it in the tune she hummed to herself. It sounded lonely. But how did it sound lonelier than singing alone?
As Zeru rose from his slumber, and the couple made themselves ready for the morning, Nephele felt it in her chest a little heavier.
“What’s wrong, dear?” he asked.
She couldn’t say.
They bundled themselves in extra layers before stepping into the rising morning sun. From a tent in the close circle, she watched as Cyrus grinned at her, standing alone. He looked as though he had been waiting outside, as he usually did.
But the world did not keep waking. Not yet.
She knew something was wrong, as she stared at the unmoving flaps of the adjacent tent, its softly sunburst silks dancing subtly in the winter air. And she waited. And she waited for nothing.
“Brontë..?”
And no one hurried faster to check on her sleeping baby than the mother herself. All of her sinking feelings plummeted her instantaneously to her knees as she opened the curtains to an empty, perfectly made bed. She screamed. She sobbed. She was flung into hysterics and panic.
That was the day she lost her son.
-
There were times, after stepping into motherhood, that she craved some quiet time. And she had that option, to leave her boys with a steward to usher them to bed, but that immediately caused her to be soaked in guilt. However, with two children who weren't even ten years old yet, it got quite exhausting, and her husband urged her to take the evening for herself, to not let the culpability eat her alive.
So, she tried, curled into a stack of pillows, surrounded by silks and soft candle glow, a book and some tea in her lap. Though, she found that she could not focus on the words on the page, returning back a few lines with no progress made. What if her boys needed her? What if they thought that she no longer loved them? Her mother had done the same to her, and she understood the privilege to be able to take a moment to herself now, and did not hold it against her, but did she understand when she was only six? Would they?
She felt as though she couldn't quiet her worrying mind, spiraling into what-ifs of failed parenting, of the potential of her sons craving escape, longing to leave, solely because she did not love them enough. And beyond that, if she could not spend her every moment with them now, what would she do when she had no more moments left?
The worry stilled, the guilt quieted, only for a moment, as she felt her hair loop around the front of her neck, a gentle gust pushing from behind her ear. A breath to let her know he was there. It felt like music in that deafening silence.
She turned, and she could not stop the tears that welled in her eyes when she saw her little Brontë, standing so quietly, so politely, as if he had been waiting for her to turn around.
"Sorry," he stammered, shifting his weight back and forth on his feet. "I was… I wanted… I was having a bad dream."
And she needed that, more than anything, to be a mother in that moment. To open her arms with ease to comfort her baby.
-
The world felt quiet. There was no melody in the winds of the silken sails.
Nephele did not rest at first, pacing endlessly as she tried to figure out where her boy had gone.
His adulthood was brought up, and the mention of how he was able to travel alone, to explore and learn. She’d done that before, so had her husband. Long ago, they had left the confines of the Squall, they had taken their own journeys. There was once a time where she walked the surface of Exandria alone, and she had learned of the beautiful, dangerous world and decided that it was not for her. And she never, ever wanted her boys to suffer. That is why she never told them, never allowed them that possibility.
And for a while, she clung to that selfish fear. She held onto the idea that Brontë should not have to wander the worlds and find danger. She stayed stubborn in the fact that she wanted him brought home.
“It’s been months, dear,” Zeru said finally, exasperated tone breaking through his comforting composure. “At this point, it seems like he is deliberately straying from home. Maybe we just give him time?”
“What if he’s dead?” she said, voice so quiet and monotonous that it was chilling. “What if he can’t come home?”
“I feel as though we would’ve heard something.”
A pause, then he added,
“I feel as though you would just know.”
And how could she argue with that? She’s been saying, a mother just knows, and she’s been saying it a lot recently. She just knows he’s out there, and maybe she just knows he’s not coming back anytime soon because he doesn’t want to. And she just didn’t quite want to accept that. She didn’t want to let go of her baby.
What more could she do now but weep?
-
It's not as if she wanted to forbid her boys from knowing each other. She would love for them to grow up together, to run and play freely every day, to dig in the dirt and make believe between any petty fights. She wanted them to be brothers.
But they had responsibilities, Cyrus especially. They could not always be attached at the hip, they could not be nothing but children. Maybe she should be ashamed for orchestrating their futures in such a way, for keeping them apart more than the average family. But she knew what they needed to do.
Leaving them unsupervised meant talking, and as they grew older, that meant learning. She knew what it was like to be a teenager, dreaming of the outside world. Nephele didn't have any siblings. She didn't grow up with that whisper in her ear at first. Until there was a girl around her age who had been appointed as an aid, and she knew of the rest of Exandria, of it's wonders and fears. And in her friendship, Nephele learned, and left, and she never wanted to go back.
So when their tutor noticed Cyrus starting to make such curious faces during his studies, scrunching his eyebrows together and glancing to his brother across the room over the pages of his book, and this tutor returned this information to Nephele, she knew what had to be done.
"Why isn't Brontë coming to studies with me?" Cyrus asked one day as his mother placed her hand gently on his back and began to walk him down the hall alone.
"Because," she answered, "you are getting older, and you need to focus on your duties. You're the heir, my son. You'll be studying alone for now."
She did not acknowledge the pang in her chest when she noticed Cyrus glance over his shoulder towards Brontë, who was being escorted in the opposite direction down the hall.
This was for their own safety. It had to be this way.
-
“What do you mean he’s gone?” she asked as Zeru pinched the bridge of his nose, clearly swallowing howls of anger.
“I just can’t believe that boy! I mean, I’m sure he left to follow his brother, but he’s the heir, for gods’ sakes!” the man barked, pacing with heavy feet.
Nephele could feel hot tears pricking at her eyes, but she bit the inside of her cheeks hard. Because now that both of her boys were gone, the place was starting to uproar even more than it did the first time.
And she starts to wonder if she went wrong somewhere in her motherhood. If the choices she made to keep her children safe did not work, how could she live with herself? She wanted to be better than her own parents. Why did they not want to be protected?
Did it not seem as though she loved them?
-
“What in the hells happened to you boys?”
Nephele tried her best to keep her tone as calm as she could, but it was difficult when one of her children was sobbing uncontrollably and the other had a bloody nose.
“I didn’t mean it! He started it and we were just playing at first, and I didn’t mean to! It was an accident, I’m sorry!” Brontë hiccuped through his hysterics. He wasn’t unscathed, either. His lip was split just a bit and his knees were scraped up, so she assumed that they were play-fighting, wrestling in the courtyard or something.
Cyrus wasn’t as emotionally overwhelmed, but he seemed more upset by his younger brother crying than he did by the blood dripping from his nose.
“Oh, my babies,” she muttered, standing and rushing to her boys and crouching down to wipe their eyes and noses. “You both need to be more careful.”
Though something told her that they wouldn’t. And they didn’t. She supposed she would never fully understand her boys, but she grew to learn that if they had even the slightest disagreement—it could be over a pen—they’d go to the field for a few hours and come back bloodied and bruised, but the tension in the air always seemed to dwindle after they got their feelings out. Brothers. They were odd.
-
It had been over a year since Brontë had left, about half of one since Cyrus. Nephele felt like she was stuck waiting, like there was nothing else she could do but wait.
She was quiet every day as she woke, wrapping herself in silks and making her tea, listening to the silence that wrapped around her. No music, no sunlight. Nothing changed, nothing moved. She sat and waited every day for something.
And then the day came where she wished she’d just stopped wishing.
When the Air Ashari showed up suddenly to the Squall, Nephele found that the heaviness in her chest again, a feeling she hadn’t felt in a while. It had just been numb these past lonely months–nothing to weigh her down, nothing to lift her up. But this mass was as horrid as when Brontë left, when Cyrus left. She knew something was happening before it even happened.
Nothing could have prepared her for the hit that was the news of the death of her oldest. Nothing could’ve prepared her for the fact that they couldn’t even find his body.
Compared to her husband, her reaction was hysterical. In the eyes of everyone else, it was justified. Collapsing to her knees, all she could do was weep, sobbing into the dirt at her feet and hoping the gods would hear her, would grant her some kind of miracle.
She knew it wouldn't come.
-
It’s not like she wanted her children to see anything this drastic.
There was a court dance. The boys were teenagers at this point. She noticed how they enjoyed these parties. Sure, they were always with the motivation of business, but her sons got to socialize.
Cyrus eased into conversation like it was second nature, and he had a practiced way of getting along with everyone that people loved. He was falling into his role as heir and he was doing it with love
Brontë was a bit different. He could be awkward at times, but he melted into social situations with a want for life. Nephele did not miss the spark of adventure in his eye. He was naturally charming in a slightly different way than his older brother, and knew how to adapt to the people around him. He danced with strangers and told stories, contrasting to Cyrus’ more composed smiles and compliments.
So, of course she helped them ready themselves. Sure, most outfits were stuff that was picked for them—they were hosts, there was a degree of professionalism, in a way. But that didn’t stop Brontë from fixing his hair over and over in different styles until he was satisfied with how it laid against the fabric on his shoulder. And he fussed with his brother over the cologne he chose, bickering as brothers do.
And they danced! They danced and mingled, as they did. And Nephele kept catching them laughing, moving from person to person, people they'd invited, people they'd expected.
Until it wasn't who they expected.
Brontë, bursting from his shell, only feet away from his oblivious older brother, was hand in hand with a young man, probably a few years older than him, waltzing through the floor and laughing and whispering. But Nephele didn't miss it, the twinge of magic, the note that something was off. She tugged on her husband's sleeve, pulling him from his conversation to point to the unfamiliar face, the features just not right, the eyes too dark.
This was someone that did not belong, and they were using her son to get information, because he was young and naive and was the closest they had gotten to the head of the family.
It was fast—the snap of fingers, magic dispelled revealing the true identity of the figure hand in hand with her boy.
And then, it was over.
She cradled Brontë against her chest like a child as they whisked away the body, the operative having been killed on the spot. She knew the face he was making without even having to see it—wide eyes, mouth hanging open as he tried desperately to make some kind of sound, form some kind of question. But he couldn't. He didn't.
She didn't want him to see that. She didn't want him to have to know.
She knew he would have to eventually.
-
"How was the council meeting?" Nephele asked as she heard her husband's footsteps reenter the room. She did not bother looking away from her view where she sat just outside the silks of her room, watching the sun set over Vasselheim from the comfort of her height in the Squall.
Zeru did not speak, not at first. And when Nephele got no answer, she turned to look at him again.
And there it was. That weight, that feeling. She knew something was off. But it was different than before, not as heavy, but still aching to some degree.
"Zeru?"
"I saw him today."
A pause. A longer one. She wanted to ask who he meant, but she knew. Of course she knew, because a mother just knows.
But she had to ask because she couldn't just believe it, and her question of 'who?' came out no more than a whisper.
"Brontë was at the meeting."
She stifled a little sob, nearly dropping her teacup as her hand flew to cover her mouth.
"Oh, gods, is he—"
"He's… he's safe. He's with a group of new friends. They seem to be… capable young folks, most of them." And he paused to laugh softly a moment before adding, "He's got a new name he's parading around with."
"New name?"
"Dorian Storm. Truly, something out of a fairytale, I don't know how he comes up with these things."
And he continued to ramble on about the dangerous task he was taking on, about how he was chasing importance with danger, how he tried to get him to come home and only got the promise of later, a promise he couldn't be sure he could count on.
Nephele practiced the new name in her head over and over the whole time.
And she practiced every day. By herself, when talking to others, over and over.
My youngest, Dorian. I remember when Dorian read that book. I can't wait for Dorian to come home. Dorian, Dorian, Dorian.
She said it over and over until it started to come with ease, until she didn't even realize she was saying it. She needed to be ready for when he came home. Not if, she refused to say 'if.' Because she knew he would come home, and he would come home soon.
Until then, all she could do was continue her routine. She rose early, just like every morning, wrapped herself in silks, and set her kettle on the small arcane flame stone in her room.
She she hummed to herself this morning, a tune she'd sung to her boys so many times in their youth, a song that was not quite a lullaby. It was a tune to an old tale of their family steed, but she didn't bother with the words now. Just let the melody lull into the air as she began her next day of waiting.
Until the breeze in her hair made her stop, kettle in midair as the warm wind curled behind her ear. A breath to let her know he was there.
She didn't turn around for the first few seconds, not wanting to believe it was true yet, too scared to be disappointed. Oh gods, how relieved she was to not be.
Standing behind her as she turned, after a year and a half of waiting, was her boy. Her Brontë. No, no. Not Brontë—
"Dorian…?" she gasped. "Dorian, my baby!"
She missed the table when she attempted to set the kettle down, but she didn't care, she couldn't care about that right now. She let it clatter to the ground because she had to get to him, she had to run and scoop him into her arms.
"Dorian."
"…You don't have to call me that."
She froze for a moment, not letting go of him. Though, he was still in her hold, his arms limp at his sides and chest tense as his voice quivered. And then she swore she could hear her own heart shatter as he asked,
"Oh, Mom… do you hate me?"
She couldn't even get out the word 'no' for him. Or rather, she did, but he was already sobbing hysterically by the time she did, and her voice could not be heard over the sound of his anguish. Finally, he crumpled into her hold, arms circling her torso and grasping desperately to her silken robes.
"Is this not what you wish to be called?" she whispered, worried. "Your father said that—"
"It's alright," he assured through a sniffle. "Yes."
She did not miss the way he'd nodded, and there was an understanding. It was his name, he did not lie to his father. But she thinks that maybe, her boy just needs the comfort of his mother, the familiarity of home for a moment. He did not abandon his old name, even if he fits more comfortably into the new one. His name may be Dorian now, but he wanted to be Brontë, just for a few moments more.
When he cried too hard to stand, she sat with him, pulled him into her lap and stroked his hair the way she'd do for him when he was a young boy, when he ran to her room after a bad dream. She'd do this for him a million times over, she'd remedy whatever she could by singing softly to him and coaxing him to sleep for a moment if that is what he asked for.
"My sweet Bron. All it takes to start again is to wake up one morning and decide to."