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Anyone loved by a God is doomed to live a tragedy. That was the first thing Briar's mother taught her. You cannot be in the heart of a God without feeling the world shatter beneath your feet. And yet, even with a broken spirit, Leah longed for Hypnos.
Love turned to addiction. Briar supposed it had to be better than drugs but she still had to watch her mother fade. She knew Leah held out for as long as she could but the woman craved Hypnos. Without him she was in agony. Her soul searched for his calm nature. She needed his laughter, coy smiles, and his cold hands holding her warm ones. Leah needed to hear his voice more than anything.
To love is to suffer.
Their roles from previous games reversed. She was chasing after the remnants of his devotion. With her eyes closed and consciousness shut out from the world she weeped for her lost lover. Begging him to come home.
In her time of aching she forgot about her daughter. A girl who couldn't have been older than ten was left to care for herself. Briar blamed love itself for her misscomings. She vowed to never feel it, to keep her heart in a box made of stone and iron chains. She refused to become a ghost, to abandon everything.
Briar lost her mother to a broken heart but she had gained guidance through a set of deities. The Oneiroi; Morpheus, Phobetor, and Phantasus. Her brothers. They were the ones to lead her to Camp Halfblood in the form of dreams, showing her the routes that would be safest as they would prefer to keep the child alive rather than hear their father's complaining. Phobetor would appear to her as a bird with feathers black as night.
He would glide through the wind above, Phantasus pushing them forward but in the lead was always a thin pale man with black hair and large silver wings — ones nearly identical to her own. They'd promise Leah would be cared for to ease her mind ( Morpheus was reluctant but Phantasus shoved him around till he gave in ) like the good brothers they were trying to be. Some more than others.
They were her family.
✧˖*°࿐
For almost three years Briar had resided at the camp of energetic halfbloods. In that time she made very few friends — if any at all. Not many were welcoming when it came to children of the Underworld. Not that Briar minded all that much. She was a kid who enjoyed isolation over socializing. Something her brothers could relate to. Maybe she was reclusive by nature? Even back with mortals the girl kept to her lonesome.
Nobody understood what it was like to see things others could not. Briar Bardale was seen as the odd-one-out in her old neighborhood. Other kids avoided her like the plague but she preferred it that way. Briar didn't want to make friends, she wanted to be at peace. And if that meant being alone then she welcomed the silence.
