3So, I've been writing this story off-and-on since my freshman year of college. I've had neither the confidence nor skill to finish it. To be completely honest, I'm not sure I have either of those things now. But, I want to write it, and I'm going to try to tell their story. Thank you for reading and giving this a chance. I hope you like it. ~Jazei
She guarded her child fiercely, thrusting her hands out behind her to encase the confused looking girl in a protective barrier.
"You will not have her!" Cephei insisted, glaring at her armed guards surrounding them. The winds picked up in time with her anger, sending the shutters of the small wooden house into a fluttering cacophony, and glass shattering to the ground. "Mother?" She begged.
"Give the child to me, Aldebaran!" Lyra pleaded, from behind the demi-gods closing in on the two, for the sake of her daughter and grandchild, and reached forward for his arm, but he pulled away, unswayed.
"Silence, Lyra! I gave you one child, and that was a mistake." He insisted, glaring between her and his deranged illegitimate child. Her hair, the color of his life's blood, whipped under the onslaught of her poorly withheld powers. Her dark skin smooth like a child's– a dangerous and malicious beauty.
"Cephei, the child will not be harmed, but it is time for you to face judgment for your actions." Aldebaran demanded. Beside him, Rigel and Antares stood with hands clasped tightly together, it was time for things to be set right.
With the point of his finger, Cephei, his twelfth child, his disappointment, was shackled in chains of heavenly light, screaming for the halfling she called "Elle," and whisked away to stand trial, her evils to be rectified. The demi-gods surrounding her disappearing as well, leaving the room empty save for he, his wife, Sarza, his regret, Lyra, his two closest companions, Rigel and Antares, and the child - shaking, confused, and in tears.
"Give her to me!" Lyra insisted, gesturing to the child with greedy affixation before taking a step towards her. But Sarza, held her still, "Do you not think it unwise, poor Lyra?" She taunted, tongue still bitter with the aftertaste of Lyras betrayal.
"You lay with my husband and were granted keep of the bastard you bore, and now we face ramification our actions! I'll not allow you raise another monster." Lyra reared back, as if struck, before anger settled in her features, but before she could retort, Antares stepped forward beside Aldebaran, who settled his intense gaze on the child, who had, by then, stopped crying, and instead, stared back silent save for the hiccups which had settled over her.
"Rigel and I will take her."
"I want her!" Sarza declared, glaring at the room. But Sarza wasn't to be trusted. This, they all knew. As taken as she seemed to be with the child -as shown in the days before Cephei's retribution- Sarza had always resented both Lyra and her daughter, Cephei- there was no telling what she would do to the child.
"But she is my blood!" Lyra, insisted.
"And your blood stole from mine!" Antares cut.
Rigel stood to the side, a few steps behind his wife, and watched as his friend stood, ignoring the fighting amongst the women. He hesitated to say anything, as a look of satisfaction crossed the High God's features. "She comes with me." He finally said, so lowly that Rigel almost didn't hear him. And then, with a softness with which Aldebaran had never been known to wield, he called to the girl.
"Come, child. I know just the place for you."