_____The rain was a steady constant by now, heavier than it had been before. She had moved on past her father and was now picking over Jasper once again. She had heard him cry out for Matinee before but it seemed like when she had been around him lately, he had gone quiet. Maybe it was what she had been giving them, but maybe it was what Endymion had given them, but it had quieted them all down. It gave them the comfort that she hadn't been able to obtain. Brushing his hair out of the way, she wondered if Jasper would know exactly who she was. Before he hadn't really reacted to her voice at all as much as Laruku had and it worried her. It worried her knowing that he was the sickest of them all. With a chair pulled up alongside of where the younger man of the pair was lying, she let her hand trace the side of his face before roaming along his neck and shoulder in a comforting manner. Her expression was bleak but stoic and she held his hand for a few moments before speaking.


_____“Can you hear me, Jasper?”

_____His voice was so very different than what she was used to hearing. It didn't have the wonder or the tinged edges of sadness that she recalled; it was weak and wary, lost in a sea of haze and static that she could neither see nor hear. And it rightfully pierced her heart in a way she deserved—he thought she was his mother and his mother was the last thing Corona wanted to think about—but also stirred desire in her as well. She wished she could have called out for her own mother and have her be right there, but she couldn't be there. Her mother was dead and gone in every regard that she knew of and for all she knew (and not cared), so was his. “No… no,” she returned, “it's your sister. It's Corona.”

_____So maybe it didn't matter what she said or who she said she was, he thought that she was his oh-so-glorious mother. Corona could probably understand why he had been crying for his mother all of that time; both she and Rachias her female and had done talking to him before. Corona was, however, the older of the two and she silently wondered if the way she moved or spoke made him think that she was his mother. What he did say surprised her though, because she had been absent on the details of what had transpired between Ahren and Matinee. She had never asked her father what had happened, but only assumed that Matinee had left him.


_____So now she was intrigued and soon grappling with a desire to find out more from him. But it wasn't right to ask him those things when he was in such a state, was it? It wasn't right to make him think that he was speaking to his mother, she thought, but if she left, then he would cry. The last thing Corona wanted to do was make him cry, at least cry in the manner that he would if she left. “She knows that,” she offered instead, “and you should rest.” None of it was right and already she was looking for an exit. She didn't want to hear any of it, she didn't want to feel the way she did about all of it.