"I WANT MAMA! MAMA! MAMA!" the sapling cried after they violently slapped away the spoon I was feeding them with. And I had to admit, I was a bit stumped on how to handle this. This child, despite refusing to eat, had enough energy to make it difficult to get them. My patience was also running thin.
But I refused to lash out at the sapling as he just couldn't help it. How could I expect the sapling to get it? I would just have to try and wait it out. Yet, did I have the patience to?
To hear him demand for that thief again and again with such force. It was disheartening to hear. I was more than she ever would be yet he just wanted her...
"SILENCE!" I then roared at the sapling. And while I was quick to realise the mistake I had just made. I could not bring myself forward to try and coddle the sobbing child. I just stared at it as it became lost.
He wanted someone to hold him, but not me. He wanted someone to hold him and tell him it was going to be okay, not it would not be me. He wanted me to go away and never come back, which I could not do. Worst of all, when I went, he wanted that woman to just suddenly come back...
It was her incompetence that saw her disappear. This had nothing to do with me! And I would not tolerate a stupid, ignorant child telling what to do. We were going back home, to the garden-mount.
That was final.
"Right, that does it." I nearly growl as I finish picking up what I could before then snatching him up. At first he struggled and fought back against me. But every bit of annoyance this sapling tried to force into me I forced back out. I think it even led to me cracking the ancient stone as I marched down and out of the ruins.
The realisation of death and smoke, however, seemed to quieten them down. Even if they refused to cling onto me as we went past freshly charred bodies. At first, I lingered around it all slightly. Then I moved on without a word, unsure of why I stopped at all.
Soon after, though, the sapling started to act up again. So I put him down on a flat rock and stared angrily at him. Somehow, though, the glare he gave me made me step back in shock. He even growled like an animal as he slapped the stone.
"BAD WOMAN! WHERE MAMA!?" he screamed at me with a distinct crack in his voice. From then on out, he seemed to run out of strength to scream and he carried on crying. A concerning wheeze in his bawls while he also seemed to double over in pain.
"This is what happens when you don't eat..." I tell him quietly as I move to sit next to him after dropping the bag. Even now, though, as he cried because of his body hurting. He still tried to keep me away from him. Yet, I could not just let him keep this up.
He even nearly seriously hurt himself when he got down from the rock. And, after a brief moment of rummaging about, he pulled out that toy of his. The one he got so recently. And he held it in front of me with a pleading expression.
"Mama!" he whined as he shook it. His hands around the part of the picture with his smiling mother...
I then lean back and sigh, "I suppose this is it, then..."
I found myself muttering before I gazed up at the cloudy sky. Either I went off to find where Dandel'lhia had gone for the sapling's sake. Or, knowing the kind of woman that she is... I took her son to the garden-mount without her...
"How annoying." I mutter as I stare at the sapling as he quietened down. He was still clearly upset and shaken by the loss of his mother. But this picture of her soothed him at the very least. Yet, it still angered me to see it.
This time, however, I could not argue against it. That woman was his mother. I was not his mother. It was an obvious difference that somehow needed to be reiterated.
"Mama..." he whined once again as he moved to hide in the bag.
"I suppose this will have to do." I end up saying as I seize the opportunity to move him without any bite back whatsoever. He didn't seem to mind either, but even as all the stuff started to jingle and bounce. His sadness stood above it all. And I could not block it out in the slightest.
I tried to put up with it, but it just kept punching deep into my core. This child did not want me, he wanted his mother. And I was out here all alone. Because no one wanted me...
So I stopped and slowly put the bag down before I made a rash decision and went ahead briefly. Then I stopped again and I looked around, and to my dismay... Despite it not being new information, the fact I was on my own scared me. Not the Gilded-Bark, my Love or even the one I briefly left him for...
I was on my own and I could not grasp why. I was Rose'lhia, a full name petal... I was an ivy-mother, one of the very best from our garden-mount... So why was I all alone?
Why was there no one there for me? This child had his mother somewhere out there... She had to be... And she had him and the Gilded-Bark...
"Why am I alone?" I asked myself before I collapsed to the ground. Because I was a bad woman...? Like the sapling said...? I don't think I could even argue against it...
The sapling was right, despite polygamy being the norm for us petals... I tried to get Dandel'lhia killed on several occasions. At the hands of osibindah before I tore her apart for even crueller plans. Then, after my Love brought me up that mighty mountain...
So we could stand before the unbeatable titan of stone that was the greatest mountain... Nin was there with me when we first saw Jhroungijherammujhernosumonaterikra... And within so short a time I turned my back on him for some human with impressive magic... But we were raised to be like that, to focus on the strongest males...
Yet, I as an ivy-mother was taught to follow Motrtha's teachings first... Her teachings of love and family til the very end... From her I learned how to be an ivy-mother. And I ignored all of it just to satiate desires I never went through with even then...
"Yes..." I let out as tears start to fall, "I am a bad woman... I'm the worst..."