let me light up the sky

Things had been going well. Her pregnancy was confirmed, she had a loving husband and best friend and was surrounded by family at all times. Things had been going so well it was difficult for even Furia to be a sourpuss, but now? Now she was just angry -- it she would be when she woke. For the time being she was simply washed up on shore, her body eerily still despite the chittering birds and sounds of life around her. Being washed away in a flood hadn't been the best of times, unfortunately, but at least there was still breath in her body as she impatiently waited on the other side of consciousness.

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These lands were strange, and yet here she was. Wandering now through the jungle, it took the woman back to the time she lived in one with her first husband. Where she had started her family, where, unbeknownst to her, her youngest son would rule the very same place. These trees were not her own, however, leaving a bittersweet feeling in her heart as she still tried to imagine the sight of her cubs running around there forested home.

Joka, with his boundless energy, practically rampaging through the trees. She recalled the time he ran from baboons and hid in the crook of the roots until help arrived. Oh, and little Romulin, when he first discovered the difference between light and shadow. Kito pictured him sitting in the shade of a tree, half of his face in darkness while the other was lighted by the sun. It was then that he learned one side was warmer than the other. And then there was @Furia. No, wait. Furia wasn't apart of that litter. No, that was Furia laying there unconscious! Was it really her? Now Kito understood why she was in these lands.

Rushing to her daughter's side, the mother wanting nothing more than to pull the golden woman into her embrace. To comfort and croon over her beloved daughter and plea for her to awaken, but she could nothing to touch her daughter. "Furia!" she screamed, standing helplessly at the rogue's side. "Please, sweetie. Please wake up. It's me. It's Mom. Please, honey, wake up for me." Kito's words were frantic, as any worried mother's voice would be. This was the worst feeling for an experienced healer, to stand unable to help someone when she knew exactly what to do.

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At the end of the day, Furia was a stubborn old hag. Her mind was whirling and the cranks were turning, but her body simply refused to be anything but a limp noodle slapped up across the shore. She was only vaguely aware of a voice calling out to her as she lay there, and though it had a familiar and comforting singsong quality to it, Furia knew it was nothing but a trick. Concussions had a tendency to do that, she knew.. okay, she didn't know shit about concussions, but she certainly didn't believe the voice when it encouraged her to wake up because it was her mother. Unconscious Furia almost snorted with a laugh. Almost.

Conscious Furia decided to take over, though.

The golden lioness stirred with a groan, her head throbbing as she coughed and sputtered on some water she had swallowed on the worst Disney ride ever. She was overall in good shape if a bit banged up, yet as her eyes began to open she realized there was something wrong inside her brain. "Whoaa, so lifelike. Good job, concussion. Looks just like her." Furia waved a paw dismissively at the ghost, oblivious to how real she was.

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Her brows were knit with the kind of worry only a mother could feel until at least her daughter stirred. Her sides were moving with the rhythm of proper breathing after @Furia managed to cough up some water. "Oh, thank the spirits!" Kito exclaimed with relief before the golden woman finally took in her apparition of a mother. Frankly, she shouldn't be that surprised that Furia didn't instantly realize that her mother really was there in ghost form, but after all this time apart, and to finally learn why she had come to these lands at all, the silver woman was in no mood to entertain her girl's disbelief.

The scarred woman fluffed up in a huff as she stared down on her daughter, waving a paw in front of the mirage. "Furia Besnika Hodari Livius!" Oh, boy. She got the whole name. That was never a good sign. "You will not speak to your mother that way!" Kito even went so far as to stamp a foot, but it made no real difference considering she couldn't really feel the ground. Still, if Furia took another look at the ghost, there was no denying who she was.

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let me light up the sky

Furia could have stayed there for hours, honestly. Now that she had coughed up some water she felt loads better, so why not take a nap? She was heavily pregnant and deserved it, didn't she? Yeah. Plus, that was the best thing to do during a concussive episode! The golden lioness would have merrily gone on ignoring her hallucination had it not shrieked her full-ass-fuckin'-name. Her eyes snapped open as she scrambled to her paws, panicking as she tried to make sense of what she'd just heard.

"The fuck?" she gasped, blue eyes sweeping around until they landed upon the translucent form of.. of her mother. "... Mama?" Furia stared in bewilderment, mouth dropped wide open. "Mom?" Ahh, nope, there were the tears.

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Kito stood with that scrunched-up-mad-mom face until her daughter finally came to her senses and realized who she was. Though she wanted to stay mad, the moment she heard @Furia call her Mama, the anger melted away. "Yes, sweetie. It's Mom. It's really me," the silver woman crooned. Oh how much she wanted to hold her daughter. This must be what Ademt and Paloma had felt like all that time they spent as spirits. They were still spirits, right? The thought hadn't crossed until now that she hadn't met any other Hodari spirits in these lands, yet, here was her daughter....

The tears welled in her own eyes again, finally giving herself a second to take in her daughter's image. Definitely older than she last saw her, a number of scars marring her coat. The worst case scenarios were already churning through the Hodari's mind. Furia had obviously been through a lot in her life so far. Oh, and what's this? The swell to sides was an obvious indicator. Pregnant? "Furia... what happened here?" It was all she could ask at the moment. She'd get to the gushing over grandbabies eventually, but right now she needed to know what the hell happened in that Mire place and why was her daughter washed up in the river?

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let me light up the sky

Although Furia had experience with ghosts and spirits and all of that jazz, she had never been visited by her mother. It brought fat tears to her eyes when she saw her standing there (much younger looking than Furia was) in all her glory, angry mom-face and all. "Mama, how'd you get here?" Wouldn't she have been.. tethered? "Can you do the thing like grandma and grandpa? They're alive, they just.. we don't know how it happened. Can you?" The golden lioness quickly closed the space between them, reaching out a paw to gently tap around where Kito's should have been. "I- I want a hug, can you?" All the Hodari had wanted for years was to hug her mother; it was almost torture to stand there without being able to touch. "Can you try?" Furia's bottom lip quivered as she did her best not to openly sob, but shit, that was a lost cause. "I miss you, Mama. So much." So break the rules and materialize, goddamnit.

As for what was happening behind her.. well. "A flash flood. I'm sure everyone else is safe, I just happened to take a nap in the wrong area." Furia glanced over her shoulder, not entirely sure why it mattered because hello! Mom and daughter times!

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Now that was the question, wasn't it? How did Kito arrive in Amaryllis? "I can't even begin to know that answer. I'm just... here." She had no other explanation than that. Perhaps it was a timing thing. Maybe the Hodari needed her at a time like this. Which let's be real. They really did. Or maybe it was like the old lands were certain times of the year released all the dead from their tether. The only problem with that theory was that Kito didn't die here. It mattered not how she got here, though, for she would stay as long as she could. The next question out of her daughter's mouth, however, had the silver woman thoroughly confused. Ademt and Paloma were alive? Kito's brows knit together. "What do you mean they're alive? They reincarnated?" Had they taken over new bodies like Kerberos had? Reincarnation wasn't a foreign concept, but she could never imagine her parents willingly taking over another soul's body. "I don't... I don't think I can, though, sweetie. I'm... I'm barely here as it is." The maned woman raised a paw for emphasis. She was more translucent than any spirit she had ever seen. It's what made her think her time in these lands might be limited, but she wouldn't mention that fear to @Furia.

Sadness dampened her smile when her daughter then requested a hug. It took great strength to keep herself from sobbing as well, but the tears were ever presently dampening her fur, not that Furia would be able to feel it. "Of course, sweetheart," the mother blatantly lied as she'd move to 'hug' her golden child. "You'll just have to do some pretending, like when you were little... Pretend you can feel me, Furia." She'd move as if to hug her daughter, whispering the words with a voice already choking with emotion. "I've missed you, too, sweetheart. I love you." Yep, Kito had lost the battle against not crying. "How long has it been?" She'd whisper the question delicately, not really wanting to know how long she'd been gone, but also feeling the need to know how long she had left her daughter without her mother.

Though she couldn't exactly blame Furia for showing less emotion about the flood than she was at seeing her mother again, Kito still worried for the sake of those who had lived in the Mire. "I don't... I don't think they are, Furia," she began. "I was in there already, and.... there's no one there." Talisa had said a pride had lived in the Mire. Now, though, there was hardly a sign of life.

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let me light up the sky

Furia frowned. She absolutely hated how bloody secretive the spirit world was when it came to where and who got to appear when. There was no logical reason for Kito to be standing in front of her right now unless she wa tethered to her blood and nothing more. It made sense, she guessed? It didn't matter too much, though, because her mother was there. Her mom was there.. kinda?

"No.. yes? We don't know. They have their own bodies back, like they got reset at a certain age. When.. well, how much do you know about what's happened? With the jungle and why.. uh, why we're not there anymore?" Kito had never showed herself before, but that didn't mean she didn't know, right? Furia's tail flicked, letting her thoughts drift to Dero for a moment. "Is Dad here, too?" If anyone could help pull her brother out of his slump, it was him. Or Furio.

Her eyes watered as Kito stepped forward to hug her, the absolute lack of any sensation enough to coax forth the tears that she had been trying to hold back. "I don't.. I don't remember what you feel like, Mom," she admitted, using a paw to grasp pointlessly at the figure. "It's been seven years. Dero and I just turned eight. It's.. it's been too long, I don't remember.." She could pretend it was someone else, bring back the sensation of touching Actaeon or Jamil or Dero, but it wasn't the same. No one would ever be the same as Kito, and it was a cruel punishment to be so close and unable to touch. Furia sniffled and rubbed her cheek with the back of her paw. "Just.. c'mon, just for a second. Please, Maua, just a second?" Furia beseeched the god of the land, begging for some sort of miracle.

And then her mother explained no one was home. "... No one?" Her expression turned panicky as she turned to face the mire, eyes wide. "I.. but." But what? Furia had nothing, only confusion and fear.

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It made no sense to her. She'd never heard of a spirit returning to its original body before. They usually took over existing bodies or were somehow born into new litters. In any case, this was a new one that truly shocked the woman. Before she could voice this confusion, though, @Furia was asking about how much Kito knew about something. About the Jungle? When had they gone to a jungle in the first place? "What do you mean the Jungle? The one I ruled with Ruvaak? You guys went back!?" Was that really the jungle her daughter meant? To think that her children got to go back to the lands Kito had grown up in. It warmed her heart, or at least it would have if all this other heartbreak wasn't happening already. "I don't know anything that has happened since I died, Furia." How much she has surely missed out on. As for Aeneas, the silver woman shook her head somberly. "I haven't seen your father here, yet. You're the first familiar face I've seen at all." And arguably, she was the best familiar face to find, if only the golden girl wasn't so beat up at the moment.

She felt helpless, unable to touch her daughter, to offer any means of physical comfort like a mother was supposed to do. It only made the tears worse in her eyes. "I'm sorry, sweetie," is all the scarred woman could muster between her own sobs. It's been seven years. The words sunk in like a ton of rocks. Seven years?! That was practically a lifetime already. The best years of a life, anyway. Kito was already starting to imagine the big moments she'd missed in her daughter's life. Love, loss, successes and hardships. The good and the bad. Kito should have been there for it all. Had she found love? Was this her first litter? Had she ever desired to take rank somewhere or learn a craft? All these things she never really got to see unfold for her daughter. She would take comfort, however, in the mentioning of her youngest son. How on earth these two were already eight years old was beyond her, but at least maybe in mentioning Dero, it meant he was here, too. "Is your brother here, too?" That would be some luck, to be in such a foreign land and yet have two of her children living here. Wait until she found out about all her grandchild and even great-grandchildren now, but then Furia dropped another name that confused her once more. "What is Maua?" She wouldn't realize that Maua wasn't so much a what as they were a who.

In watching her daughter's panicked expression, Kito felt the guilt of dropping such information on Furia. She hadn't meant to, but she couldn't act as if everything was alright in the Mire. "Not living there, no. I've crossed paths with a few individuals already, but none seemed to be the ones that lived there before." Everyone she had met seemed to all be wondering the same thing. What happened to the Mire?

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