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Some of her children understand what it means that even now, scattered across time and space, that she answers to their call. Long after the strands of her own existence have been woven, cut, dyed and worn out.
Some of her children look at her with eyes of disdain, distrust, confusion. A few have laughed and hurled their nonsense words of hate at her. Some get very angry at her. Their connection ricochets through her many souls. She is an infinite being, a fractal that exists in the children of children of children of children she has borne. She knows her daughters for who they are, knows that some will be disappointing, frustrating as children are. Some will be triumphant, pride-making, honorable. All will be loved. All will be lost.
She loves them all but the texture of that love varies as the texture of the places into which they call her varies. Ice cold, rock rough, lush and green, salty and sandy, lonely and howling with wind, flooded.
Daughters with questions. So many questions. It is in this she knows them best. What do they ask - Some get right to business, ask the thing they need most. Some ask about themselves. Some ask about her.
Only one ever asked her name. Kendra. Dear child but so very chained. She aches because this child knows what it is like she knew what it was to be tethered to unwanted ground and encircled and honed to fine sharpness as the curls of self and spirit are carved away and fall like the shavings from a stake.
The forced tongue lilt so beautiful in cadence and call: "Do you have a name? What would you like me to call you? My name is Kendra. I'm a vampire slayer. Just like you."
I know you, daughter. She speaks in Kendra's tongue and Kendra's way. Her voice and their ears are perfect mates always. They hear her in the way they understand.
"Daughter? Are you my mother?"
That she asks and does not know this answer's certainty is a wound. Motherless daughter. Motherless child.
All the Slayers are mine. They come to me. They come from me.
"So tell me your name, mother."
You already know it.
"But I don't."
Look at me. You know.
"Ah."
She would tell this daughter the name of her killer. A name that's burned on her own skin, scarred into her. A name she must know and the indignity of having to feel the name and the cold dead taste of this thing, a vampire - a vampire! How pathetic! She held back the demons, the purest ones. She fortified her home with their bones and consecrated her daughters with their blood. Now these bright, fierce women-children of her soul are reduced to slaying them like lionesses reduced to hunting rats when once they brought the mightiest of the herds to their deaths.
She would say this name and she would have this daughter know the truth. She would unchain this daughter and free her. Speak the truth of the Watchers who collar and guide her children and do not respect that they are not the masters at all or of anything.
She cannot. Though she knows what awaits this child of hers that she loves deep, she cannot speak it. For the sake of all the daughters waiting to come unchained for all time, for the sake of the things to come, she cannot. For the sake of the daughters who will finally become sisters.
Even these vermin have their part. One seek the wild beasts of the forest and contend with them. One to burn for her daughter's sake and still it is not enough because she felt his teeth in her as his teeth were in her daughter's neck (oh that daughter, crying for her mother, then, too, begging for forgiveness she never required), felt his hands around her neck as his hands were around her daughter's neck. One to usher in something new to the world. One to send the world flinging into chaos when needed, to speak the language of utter disorder.
Poor beautiful chained daughter. Fated to hold open the gates and to be unrecognized by all but her mother.
You will do all that you must and you will do it perfectly. You require only yourself.
This daughter she grants what her other children have not needed. Touch. She touches her daughter's skin and her hair, examines them and finds that they are as perfect as ever a mother could hope. So much this child could be taught and so much will go unlearned. She remembers her first children. One daughter on the lap, the other still inside her. Her twisting the strands of hair with good smelling oil and singing the songs to teach her how to hunt and kill and love and birth and dance.
It is in Kendra that she renews herself and knows why she did not surrender power, though it ached in her and spilled her blood. She knows now why she forced the men who bound her to the stone, to the darkness, to do this one thing. She always knew but in Kendra is it's living definition.
In power and the pain it brings is the ability to do this. She bought her daughters' freedom in this bargain, and turned away from the path that would have lead her to harmony and long rest. She will wander and be summoned and be so tired for so long. She will not sleep as she did not sleep when her body children hadn't yet learned to rest when she rested. She will rush and struggle, ever toiling for their good.
When her first body child cracked the neck of a lion and skinned a demon with the knife she made of its bones she knew then why she would endure. To see your children peel the skin of evil back from the world so that the other mothers and the other children and all their bodies may thrive, that is a thing you trade all others for.
"But, mother, I do not understand you."
Kissing her daughter, she says. Yes, you do.
Another daughter calls her in a far west desert, daughter wielding her own death as a weapon without knowing. This daughter will not rest as she will not rest, but she will not know chains, either. This one asks about herself, about what she is becoming because she's looked too long at her prey and begins to see her reflection in their eyes. She frets and frets about this little thing twisted into human form by ill thinking men - so many of those her children must contend with, a menace on the world, like flies gathering trying to get in their eyes and mouths! Her wiser daughters would not have need to be told what to do here. Her wiser daughters would have better gifts to give the world.
With a mother's patience she answers and she does not say, You did not care so much for your real sister when she came to you. You do not care so much about her now. You have forgotten everything.
With a mother's restraint she departs. And she does not scold though she carries the unwanted sensation of coldness inside what ought to be warm because so does this daughter. She does not scream though she knows the taste of the seed that comes from the one who has slaughtered two daughters.
Sometimes you must let your children make their mistakes. You must watch and know their arrows will fall short and their blades will break and they will tumble unbalanced, unseated to the ground.
Sometimes you must even let your children feel crocodile's teeth in their flesh and feed them back to bloody the rivers where once you drew the water to bathe them, give them drink, wash their clothes, fish for food to feed them.
The Slayers know one truth as their mother knows it: sometimes, you must bleed.
- END -