7. Sharyssa "Skytalon": An eagle alone

The house felt awfully empty, no distant sounds of footsteps or muffled voices in other rooms. An abandoned table with a few remnants of food untouched. In the hearth there was a smoldering fire as only source of light, the candles had long burned out. The silence felt heavy, filled with dark promises of lonelyness. Skytalon's shadowy frame sat on the edge of the bed, staring ahead of herself. In the silent room her breathing was soft yet audible as she ran a hand over her grown belly. Inside the protection of her womb the child stirred but it barely comforted her.

Her heart felt cold and her feet restless, everyone had left to perform their tasks. To do their best to bring him back but she sat on her own. Useless and scared.
She had always been a strong woman and from the outside her face was a stern mask, she had tried to keep her hands busy. Feed the two sabre cubs inside the farm, watch the hatchling soar around while the aging bearcubs ran around trying to chase it. She had tried everything to keep up the routine of her day but it all had felt pointless. There was no booming voice calling out for her, or suddenly the warmth of an embrace from behind to caress the boy growing inside her. Nobody to hold in their bed at night.
Sky would run across every hill and through every forest, jungle or dessert to find him yet she was bound to their home. Frustration boiled inside the woman like a growing flame, the fear of losing everything she had found was too great for her to bear.

With a heavy sigh she shook her head and forced herself back to stand, leave the room that felt cold and heartless without Faralan's presence. Wandering through the farm with each step she took echoing inside her mind as if it was playing tricks on her. To make it even clearer to her that she was on her own. She came to a halt infront of Duskeye's room, looking at the door before slowly pushing it open. It did not happen often that she set foot inside her stepdaughters private room, it made her feel uncomfortable. The obvious signs of magic and the chaotic piles of books and parchment. Nothing she even remotely felt connected to.
Even here the pressuring silence lingered, and Sky looked at the desk. Half-expecting the girl to sit there, scribbling away or reading. Or at the very least collapsed ontop of her work to sleep after hours of studying.
Instead she was in bed, it even looked like she was sleeping. Yet the woman knew she wasn't. Early morning she had watched Stormclaw walk down the hill and leave, a youngster that shouldn't be fighting on his own. It had made her want to scream, run after him with her bow and quiver in hand. But she had to stay, protect their son and keep an eye on Adenah. Reduced to a guardian while her heart yearned to run out and find the one who she had given herself to entirelly.
The one who she had seen a future with, allowed herself to settle down at last.

While her own face remained expressionless, hiding away the turmoil of worry behind a strong facade as she always had done in her life she had seen in his eyes that he felt burdened. How he worried. There was nothing she could say to him, she wouldn't beg him to bring back her husband by all means. She would not ask him to risk everything for her lovers sake, but she hoped that in his heart the right motivations pushed him onward, and she prayed to the Ancestors he'd return safe and sound. That he'd return with a large hulking man in tow.
By all her might she prayed, like she never had before. That the girl upstairs would wake up and she'd dart down the stairs again, filling the house with young energetic life. If she couldn't do anything else, than Skytalon would pray and pray again, untill her arms would wrap themselves around the body of her husband once more, the father of her son. Even if she was forced to sit at home and wait in fear for any news, she wanted to believe that the Ancestors could not be so cruel to take away everything after she had ran for so long.