Word Count :: 341 and I didn't even use the word "exterminated" DERP HERP
With so many children and so much progeny, one might have expected more ambivalence from the scarred woman regarding the individuals. The group was her legacy, her strength -- she had populated this world with the Lykois, after all. She was supposed to have been the last of them, somehow escaping the rotten tangle that had been her own childhood alive. Instead, many now carried her surname, and many more her blood -- more than she knew, really. Still, the individual did not pale in any sense in comparison to the group -- each was still her own, and each was precious to her. Her children and her children's children -- each was directly descended from her and each was precious for that.
She had not known their names. Rachias had spoken of them -- mentioned them, really -- and the silver-shaded woman had learned of many more grandchildren since. The names were served with a dose of added guilt, more she had failed, more that would not know the warmth of family. They were adults, too, and more estranged to her than their father was now. She would not know them by sight or scent, but the grizzled woman tried to picture them all the same, the fast-fading image of Rachias conjured and darkened, the other pictured as an even paler, fainter version of Laruku. She shook her head slowly, and with no small hint of sadness.
“I do not know either of them,” she confessed. She did not know the man standing before her, even. “I'm sorry,” she said, stupidly -- it was not through any fault of hers the ghosts he sought were not here. Perhaps, though, she did not apologize for this. Lame apologies would do nothing to assuage her guilt nor would it make the empty years go away, though, and she felt as lame as she sounded, lamer than Gabriel with his now-useless limb. She might not have a physical handicap of such detriment, true enough, but she was stunted and ruined in places all the same.
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