private to syzygy.

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When she was young, she wanted for nothing, as everything she could desire she had at her reach. She never knew hunger, failure or desperation. The first time she encountered grief was when her uncle, a large tom who’s stomach brushed the ground when he trudged by, keeled over one day. Heart failure, they said. She didn’t know how they knew, though; perhaps simply by guessing that with his heart no longer beating, it had failed the only task it was given.

She hadn’t known there were those lives that struggled to see the next dawn. Or that they’d have an impact on who she would become in future moons. Back then, all she knew was that life was a dream and she wouldn’t have to wake up.

When she was a young girl, before she encountered the tom that would irrevocably change her story, she lived in an abandoned home just outside the tree-line of the forest. Despite the inhospitable conditions — by some standards — she and her blossoming family got by comfortable. The prey was plentiful, lodging was warm and the scenery was beautiful.

She was never taken by ideas of traveling to unseen lands and discovering what more there was to offer in the world because she had no need. There was always a driving force behind the actions of every heroine in every story ever told, but she didn’t have a single one.

Instead, before she could understand why or where or when or how, she found herself in a copse of trees, the sun gazing down into the open meadow as if curiously waiting for her to take the next step. As if waking from a trance, she found herself dazed and confused as she gazed around herself. She didn’t recognize this place; nor did she register that she wasn’t alone.

Then he stepped from the shadows, handsome but brooding, gentle yet fierce. She knew he could have snapped her neck with one wrong sigh, but he didn’t; instead he regarded her with that smug smirk and twinkle in his eye and before she knew it...

She was carrying. She was too young to be a mother, not yet having understood how to take care of herself let alone children. But she’d had no choice. Part of her despised them with every fiber of her being; frequently she entertained the idea of ridding herself of their weight upon their birth, so as to be free of responsibility and consequence. She didn’t have what it took. And as her pregnancy went on, as she grew rounder in her expectancy and found herself conversing with the growing creatures inside her belly — her babies, her lovebugs — she realized she no longer wanted to be alone in this world. They were hers, no one else’s. This tom who she believed had cursed her had gifted her something far more precious than perhaps even he couldn’t understand.

She hadn’t seen him again after their tryst. That was alright. A few moons after that fateful night, she had no need of him. The companionship she longed for — empty space of her heart to be filled — was fulfilled by those squirming little ones. Four sweet babes, nestled against her stomach and chest, whispering their love and devotion in the quiet mewls that escaped their formed maws. They needed her protection and her warmth; she would give them everything she had and more just to see them happy.

Which was why, despite her reluctance at letting her two eldest roam free outside their makeshift den in the abandoned hovel of a twoleg who’d passed not long after taking in the pregnant queen, Spyro and her brother, Ramsay, were outside sniffing around.

The heather and white she-kit glanced over at her brother when she heard the tom call out. Tilting her short-haired head to the side, ears flopping over slightly, she trotted over.

“What’d you find?” She chirped, blinking dichroic blue and green eyes.