[imgright]https://matope.pixel-blueberry.com/imag ... uncert.png[/imgright] Time had begun to fade the sharpness of loss. Often a memory would trigger a pressure of tears but it was becoming easier to wake alone. The love never abated but the hurt was ebbing and with it the self-loathing, to an extent. She'd tried, she was still trying, and for whatever reason...

She tried to ignore that she had more needs than to be a mother. She didn't need to love or be loved. She had no use for bucks or does. She had a boar for a pet, she had children to love, and she had a garden to call home. Except that there was a hole inside. A steady throbbing pulse that reminded her of how she wasn't--would never be--good enough. She'd done too much wrong, too much damage to the world and those around her. She couldn't ever make up for it, not really. No wonder she couldn't have anyone. And they deserved better anyway.

Instead of dealing with it, she was avoiding it. She tended her garden. She hunted when needed. She visited her children often. There were no friends to meet and no attempt to make them anyway. There was simply busy work for the sake of remaining busy. The harder she ran, the harder it hit when it caught up to her. It shouldn't have been a surprise. And yet that didn't stop her from collapsing in a sobbing heap as far away from anything living as she could manage.

It wasn't far enough.

It was not often that Roses in Bloom stepped into the lives of those kin who were not expecting. Hers was a set role, a determined path. She was to be as kind and motherly as she could, offering guidance where perhaps there was none. It was her way, how the Motherfather had called to her to aid others. And she loved it. The little doe, too long for her legs, too odd for her home had found and made herself a place in this world. Had learned her story, found love, lost love, and moved on. And so those kin who had doubts on motherhood, fears on fatherhood, weren’t sure of their place in continuing their legacies... she helped them.

Only now, there was a rather somber looking soul who did not have that certain glow. That call of feeing that pulled to Rose. This was just another doe in need of kinship, of company. Someone she had been once. Her ears flicked, and Roses in Bloom approached the sobbing doe, tender and cautious hoofsteps.

“I don’t mean to intrude, my dear, but... it seems you might be in need of some comfort. And I hate to see someone so lovely as you so upset.”

There was venom on her tongue, sickly sweet and acidic, but she couldn't do anything but swallow it down her own throat. She kept her eyes closed, tightly shut against the voice, as she shook her head to try to ward it off longer. But she was too far past the point of no return, she'd tumbled off the cliffside and now had to deal with the landing that had broken her bones ages ago. It was going to hurt.

"N-not lovely," she choked out at length, eyes still clenched as her throat grew ragged from the tears. Why did sobbing feel almost like suffocating, it made it impossible to carry on forever, and so it couldn't be helped that the sobbing abated. She had to breathe or she may have wanted to breathe. Had and want were words that had been tied together and twisted into a knot of sameness that was hard to decipher.

Breathing hurt but she managed it, "She was, is, lovely. Much too lovely for a wretched hell as me." She didn't know whether to laugh or mourn at that. One day she'd ruin her children, too, and they'd forsake her as they should. She was impossible to love. Worthless. Damaged. Wrong.