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She didn’t want to feel hate towards Orson, didn’t want to cast the blame at him when he didn’t know, but.

.. it was there. It bubbled beneath the surface, and she tried everything in her might to keep it down, to keep it in.

To shift the blame elsewhere, but there was no one else except her and Weldir.

With all her heart, she blamed him for not knowing, for not somehow stopping it, but she felt she was somehow at fault too.

I should have been here. I should have been watching!

Yet her children were adults who did not want her around. Most didn’t trust her, except Nathair. And they were hundreds of thousands of miles apart.

How am I supposed to protect them when they are all so far away?!

Why did Weldir have to ask this of her? She’d been okay with it when she thought they were deathless, formidable, indestructible beings.

To know that wasn’t true... was utterly terrifying. They were so far apart, out of her reach when she tended to another, and incapable of protecting each other... or themselves.

Did that mean she had to keep them apart? To stop them from creating any meaningful bonds?

But that sounds so lonely.

“I need you to collect his skull for me, Lindiwe,” Weldir stated.

Lindiwe lowered her hands fully from her face.

“Is that all you have to say to me?” she asked with a shake in her voice, before she inhaled.

All the building rage and sorrow mingled into one, and she threw her hands out to the side and clenched them into tight fists.

“It’s like you don’t even care! One of our children just died and all you want to talk about is his skull? ! I don’t want to see it!”

She didn’t want to see the broken pieces of him.

She didn’t want to be anywhere near it, let alone Orson right now.

Lindi just wanted a damn moment to digest this! It was like she’d taken a bite out of something and tried to swallow it without chewing. She was suffocating, choking on it, and the only person before her didn’t have the heart to help.

“Of course I care!” Weldir roared, eliciting a gasp from her when he shunted forward to be less than a foot from her face.

The bridge of his nose was scrunched up tightly, and his lips – the half of his mouth she could see – were pulled back to reveal large fangs.

“Do not think this does not burden me as it does you.”

She wanted to believe that, she really did, but she had all this rage and doubt in her and she just couldn’t. He couldn’t understand, not to the level Lindi did.

“What?” she snipped out, closing the distance between them to snarl into his face as much as he did hers. “Because you lost a servant ?”

Through his chalky outline, his left eye formed like the right one, and they both narrowed. “That is vindictive,” he bit, the scrunch of his nose deepening until pieces of it flaked off to join his pointed left ear.

“I am their mother!” She patted her chest as her tears bubbled faster, harder, and somehow wetter. “I carry them! I hold them, take care of them, give them their identities while you sit here doing nothing. You can’t know what this feels like. I... love them!”

“They are mine, just as much as yours! Do you not think it does not weigh on me that I am incapable of being there? I watch , Lindiwe, as there is nothing more I can do.” His head jerked as he tsked, and he reared it back with a shake.

“Do you really think me this cold? This... callous? Lindiwe, I care for them just as much, but I lack the ability to cry, the ability to feel heartache. I cannot show you, but that does not mean this does not pain me. At least you have that release.”

“Then you collect his skull like a damn trophy!” she screamed, before letting out a squeal when the child inside her punted her so hard that it felt like her ribcage was about to snap.

She covered it with her hand and released a deep sob, her lips parting as she let out all the agony plaguing her. She felt awful that she was probably stressing her unborn baby with her insanely rapid heartbeat and shallow breaths.

A shuddered exhale fell from her trembling lips before she bit down on the bottom one so hard she feared she’d draw blood. “It’s not fair. I shouldn’t have to go through this.”

Then Weldir did something he should have from the very start.

He came forward and placed whatever physical parts of him he did have around her in the form of a hug. Lindi fought him at first, shoving her hands forward only to pass through air or nick the many edges of him. But the longer and harder he squeezed, the more she realised she needed to be embraced.

She lifted her hands to claw at his back to bring him closer, and whimpered when she lacked purchase. Then, suddenly, invisible solidness formed, and she knew he’d placed a barrier around his torso to give her something. Lindi buried her tear-stained face into the crook of his neck and wept.

A hand stroked her hair delicately, as if he’d been practising how to be gentle. The motion was soothing, even if nothing could temper the maelstrom of emotions bleeding from her heart. Their child continued to kick between them, but even that felt lighter than it had seconds before.

“I do not want Nathair’s skull for such a reason, Lindiwe,” he murmured quietly near her ear. “I want to keep it so I can protect it, keep it safe here, in my realm. We don’t know what could happen in the years to come. I would like to keep all our avenues available.”

“What does that even mean ?” she croaked, her voice cracking.

“It means I cannot promise anything, but I will try. That’s all I can say. I can see this will pain you, but I cannot touch that world. You must do it and then make those pieces intangible for me.”

Lindi nodded to say she understood, but refused to let go of him. It was the closest she’d ever felt to him, even if her chest felt hollower than ever.

I wish he was warm.

More than ever, she wished he felt... real. Human, even.

Not the semi-solid spirit that haunted her every moment.

Then he said something that touched her all the way down to the pit of her despair. “I will always be here for you, Lindiwe. Even if it doesn’t seem like it.”