2024-07-08 - [ 3-4 ] nothing gold can stay

Gwillanth’s melancholy had an undeniable effect on this dutiful dragonchild (despite the fact that this wasn’t even her sadness to bear!), and so an inexorable shadow fell over Sunbeam as Pertemarth departed.

This new sensation of loss felt heavy. A sense of heaviness that slowed all of her limbs and dulled her senses. Even the symphony of colors she normally broadcasted cheerfully to everyone in the vicinity seemed muted. It’s true that Sunbeam didn’t particularly understand the depth of Gwillanth’s worries, only that the change in her mother’s character was palpable, and so she felt it too. It brought a new set of questions, things she had never considered before.

Why did Pertemarth leave? What if Mother left and didn’t come back? Does Shayled leave Mother like this too?

These are dark thoughts.

Sunbeam mentally retracts for the first time that she can recall, choosing to allow her egg to shield herself from these pressures of the outer world that the new concerns—all of this worry—pressed upon her. It’s just an eggshell, but right now it feels like armor.
She rests. Safe, secure.
As Sunbeam is really too young and guileless to properly sulk, it is more akin to a field lying fallow. This doesn’t stop her mind from wandering.

This is not the first time those notions, those foreign words, have been invoked in Sunbeam’s presence. What was it Gwillanth had thought of again? Green, blue, bronze, gold. Maybe something else had come up before… it was something important to distinguish, but as far as she was concerned, the most important measure of anything was not whether bronze or blue or anything else, but whether or not you were going to be left behind in the end.