DotW - You Stay With Me The Same

we found our place on the branch of an old oak tree

our feet would sway to a voice in the breeze

and birds would sing on the banks of a narrow strea

these memories will stay with me.

we make our way to a hill beside the sea

with salt in the air and sand on our feet

we fought the sun as a burn upon our skin

these memories will stay with me.

now i am far away these memories still remain

now I'm far away you stay with me the same.

Hollow Coves - These Memories [link]

Until this moment she thought she knew the meaning of loss. She had felt it many times, in many different ways.

When she was very young, she lost her brothers. It felt, back then, like the most exquisite pain. She would often cast her mind back to those moments, the sticky blood pooled upon the stone, the lifeless eyes of the only family she had ever known. It was her first feeling of regret, too - regret that she had always played too roughly, that when they were alive she had always told them I hate you! With the passing of time and the benefit of age she would come to think back on those words with sadness, wishing that they had not been the last thing she'd ever said.

After several years of learning, and growing with this furious hate forged into her bones like steel, she lost her mother. This was the first time she felt truly alone. Lilja was the last wolf she ever held close, the only wolf she'd ever turned to for comfort, the only life she had ever known. Without her, Ranna's legs had trembled, wondering how she would surive alone. At least this time she'd said I love you before those final staggered breaths had left Lilja's throat. At least this time, Ranna had been by her side, a comfort her brothers had not been afforded.

It was anger and bitterness that remained her only friends, and these were the things that kept her alive. Her mother had taught her resiliance and Ranna employed her skills well. In time, being alone felt natural. She came to feel as though she did not need anyone, and besides - wolves, she knew, could not be trusted. They were wicked and they were cruel. None more so than her father, who was the contemptible root of all the loss, the regret, the loneliness. She fixated on destroying him, in the hope that it would bring peace, not only to her own life but to the fractured souls of every other part of her family. Every single wolf that had left the earth because of him.

Eventually she lost him too, but not in the way she hoped. No, Alar was spared, and Ranna almost killed. Sometimes she imagined that a death at Shenandoah's teeth would have been preferable. If only she had bitten down harder, let her fangs do what they were born to do. Puncture something, strangle the air from her lungs - anything other than let her live to discover the path that fate had laid for her. A path that only held yet more death. Yet more regret. Yet more loss. The former Queen had either failed or faltered, Ranna could not be sure which. But if she had finished it, she would have saved her from the pain that now racked her body. A pain so electric that it left her numb.

Ranna had not wanted pups. Over the course of her ill-adivsed pregancy, she certainly tried her best to get rid of them, as well as herself. Too weak to complete her only duty... how could she possibly bring up children of her own? She was scarred, she had failed her brothers, failed her mother, failed herself. She was a monster all her own and she could not protect such unblemished life from the world that would ruin it, like it has ruined her. Little had she known that she was the darkest one of all. This, she realised when she laboured her two children into the world and saw one that had never taken a breath, nor opened her tiny eyes to see the world.

Astarael was gone, and this time, Ranna had taken the innocent life. A guilt quickly consumed her, but she smothered it, turning all her devotion to that which remained. Mosrael. Light of the world.

The little wolf became Ranna's reason to exist, and even when Claire too became her responsibilty, her primary focus remained on Mosrael. Her own daughter would not be harmed, she would not suffer the things that Ranna had suffered nor see what Ranna had seen. She was chaste and pure, and Ranna would bring the world to it's knees before she would see even a moment sadness upon Mosrael's eye. She spent as much time with her as she could, all the while desperately trying to keep her well away from her own waste of a father. Oruz, a wolf who had enjoyed a dangerous game with Ranna and swiftly declined into a scourge upon her life. An itch that no amount of scratching would cure.

She'd thought there could be none more wicked than Alar. But the day she returned to a silence worse than death's icy grip, she realised that there was another challenger for Alar's crown.

Mosrael was gone.

He had taken her.

No loneliness before had felt like this one. No loss shook her so powerfully, with such a force she thought her bones might snap. Never before had she collapsed into the earth and sobbed, pressing her face into the ground her beloved daughter had tread. Never before had she ruminated for so long on everything she had said, everything she had not said, and everything between. She hoped, desperately, that Mosrael knew how much Ranna loved her. Because it seemed, quite suddenly, that she would never have a chance to say it again.


I've been thinking a lot about the last thing I ever said to the family I have lost. Sometimes I can't remember what I said. Two, I'm sure I said I loved them. The others, I don't know. I hope I did. Or if I didn't, I hope they knew. Because I loved them all. So much... so deeply. And I wish so much I could tell them one more time what they meant to me, what they still do. SO I hope you don't mind that I tried to let it influence this piece a little, while staying true to Ranna's character - one driven by fury and bitterness as much as love. I know there's some debate about how personal an artist should be here on DA, but, I guess everyone puts a little bit of their own soul into their characters. I'm not really built to keep everything cooped up inside.