Chapter 491: Departing and Sorrow
Tala felt as if the afternoon and evening after the revelation passed in a blur, and before she knew it, she was curled up beside Rane, unable to sleep.
The stars shining down from the top of their sanctum seemed too bright to her eyes, even when they were closed. The wind moving over the surroundings seemed too loud, despite none of the sound reaching her ears.
She even knew that Alat was isolating her from her threefold sight, yet still she felt like she could hear it, and it was horrible.
She almost woke Rane to try to talk through what she was thinking, but something about the steady rise and fall of his chest was soothing in its own way, and she didn’t want to disrupt or lose that.
She kept playing the earlier conversation over and over in her head, but the results were the same every time.
She would never have children of her own.
Oh, sure, there had been some hemming and hawing, claims that advances in Magic—or her own magical advancement—might correct the issue, but the underlying message was clear: Don’t expect to ever have children.
-I’m here, Tala.-
I know, Alat. I just… She couldn’t say it, but they both knew. This had been Alat’s lot in life the whole time. She’d never expected to have children of her own—even with the understanding that she and Tala were the same person, it wasn’t quite the same—and so the alternate interface hadn’t received the same blow that Tala had with the news.