2024-06-29 - Stay

She should have done more to keep them here.

It was a horrible and ugly thought and Rioth let it fly, anyway - and with the violent force of her Big Voice, she screamed as hard as she could; a thought, wordless and raw and loaded with every bottled, awful feeling that she had felt since the earthquake.

She didn't sing hard enough. She didn't tell the others she loved them, enough.

She should have shouted louder as her siblings disappeared from her thoughts, one by one. Her big voice wasn't big enough. She couldn't hold onto all of them at once.

"ROCRANTH! GHREBIETH! PYCGLOITH!" She shouted anyway as if that could drag them back out of the void, as if she could conjure up some sort of scrap of each to cling to.

And just when the feelings of guilt threatened to swallow her whole, she remembered that she was small and just as enshelled as the rest of them, and hated that too. She thrashed in anger and grief and fear - and screamed from the effort, to fall into a keening little sob.

Maybe the lost three had been hurting after all of this, too. Maybe she was next.

She wanted to comfort the others. But now, more than ever, she wanted to be comforted, too.

"Ilrioth...Yjeth. Anybody..." It was a plea for the others to stay, one that trailed into something tiny, something yearning.

"Mother?"