In the end, she couldn’t have completely saved her children by herself.
The places that she sent them to, the people that were there were the real heroes for her children. There wasn’t always someone there to give her child to, but more often than not there was. Some of them spoke a language that she knew, but most didn’t. It didn’t seem necessary most of the time.
She would push her child forward, sometimes scooting the small bundle of pink across the floor carefully, so very carefully, and then look up into their eyes. Sometimes it was a man, sometimes it was a woman, different ages and races and sizes and all kinds of other things. most would look into her eyes long and hard and then down at the snuffling and mewling child either in her arms or on the floor.
Their eyes would invariably pause on her wrists and ankles, taking in the manacles there, fastened with no lock. The skin around them was scarred and inflamed and it was obvious that she would lose her hands in any bid to release her. The look in her eyes told them that even then, she would likely never be free. All she was asking for was the freedom of the child she was holding out towards them.
They were heroes because they took the child even though it was likely that whomever held the mother would search for the child as well. They did not know that he would be searching for too many children and would likely find not even half of them. They would be safe insofar as the people who took them in would see to.
These people that she did not know, would never know, would be responsible for her child, for her children, for each part of her soul that she was able to send away. They would be parents and she would likely never be mentioned to the child that was now their’s. That was fine for her; the less her children knew about where they had come from, the less danger they would be in. The magic that she’d used to send them away worked better when there were fewer who knew the details.
Ignorance was rarely a protection for anyone, it certainly hadn’t been for her. The irony that she would use what the sire of her children had used against her in order to stop him from harming her children (and they were hers, never would they be his no matter what their genetics would say) made this sweet enough to drown out the bitter.
“Thank you.” she would always whisper, even to those who would never understand her words.
She would lean down over the child, some would awaken in order to see her one last time (or a first time) and she would mumble a few words in her own language. The language of the Phoenix.
Written for this week’s DungeonPrompts.
Breathing In 