Serpentine

Lada makes it up the spiraling steps to the library, a room nestled in a lone tower on the west wing of the palace, and spots a head of cork-screw curls shoved out the glass-less window, the breeze barely shifting the thick mass. Lada closes her eyes for a moment, knowing exactly why her daughter was half way out the window of the abandoned library. The Gate. "Miracle, what on earth are you doing? Your going to fall one of these days." The girl turns her head to the side, but keeps her eyes on the gate, her hands beginning to flex and fidgeting around the window sill. "Mama? Why cant we leave yet? I want to go out there, where the sun shines, and the flowers grow." Lada steps further into the room and walks up behind her daughter. The girl, no more than ten years of age, looks up at her mother with sadness rimming the edge of her milky white eyes. Large, white lashes flutter like butterfly wings round those orbs as she delivers the most pitiful face possible to Lada, the Russian goddess of summer and fertility, and earns a session of cuddling and cooing. Lada hopped it would distract her daughter from the question she just asked, but the girl was not easily quelled. Miracle quickly wriggles free form her mothers grasp and backs away. Her pastel lips wobble, and Lada's heart seizes as baby girl begins to cry softly. "When Papas here, he lets me go! I want to leave, Mama, it's always night time, and every one here is dead! I hate it here!" As Lada listens to her daughters words, lines begin to appear on her youthful face, and she reaches out to touch the Afro of white curls floating around her daughters head. "Come now, my little miracle, don't say such things, what if someone was to hear you? The people that dwell here can't help the fact that they have passed on, you would hurt someones feelings, wing noodle." The little girl blushes at the embarrassing nickname her mother had been calling her since she was but a baby, and turns to face her mother fully, the topic now forgotten. "Mama! Don't call me that, its too silly!" A smile of relief spills across the goddesses face, and she scoops her Miracle up and into the air, simultaneously spinning them away from the window Lada finds her daughter staring out of every day. It was becoming harder for Lada to keep Miracle's mind off of the world out side of there realm, and she feared that one day her daughter would be courageous enough to sneak through the gate. If Miracle did that, there would be no telling what would happen to her, or where the portal would take her. She could walk into the realm neighboring ours, or end up in dead space, where there is nothing but void and darkness. If Miracle ever left of her own free will to venture outside of those gates, she wouldn't be able to return when she pleased, she would have to wait for the next vernal equinox. There are so many things that can happen to a person in a matter of second, let alone minuets or hours. So there is no telling what could happen in a year. And the worse part of it all was that Lada could not leave Irij until her cycle began, so if her daughter ever left, she couldn't go out and rescue her. Her baby girl would be all alone. There are so many men, men of power, that would steal Miracle away just because she is the daughter of a fertility goddess, not to mention the allure of her daughters staggering, pale beauty. "You know mama loves you, right? You know mama wants you to be safe, and the world out there? Its not safe baby girl. We can go out on your birthday okay? So don't worry, the flowers and sun aren't going anywhere." Miracle looks up at her mama with those milky, pupil-less eyes, and nods even as a frown scrunches up her face. "Okay Mama, I promise."