Bearding The Lion (tag: Nergal)
The decision, once she’d made it, was easy. But getting to that point had not been. It was a torturous process, filled with self-recrimination and doubt. So very, very much doubt. In the short term, the path Nyx was about to take would reap nothing but more pain and uncertainty. But eventually, all would be set right for her family. For her children.
She’d struggled. No, that was too mild a term for what she had gone through to reach the decision she’d made. Struggle seemed too passive a word. She had fought to find the right thing to do, her mind as exhausted as her body would have been had she been in physical battle. But once she’d made up her mind, a peace settled over her.
Peace. Something she’d not had for far, far too long. It told her, even had she not already known, that this was the right course of action. Not the easiest, by any measure. But the correct one nonetheless.
It was tempting to take time to rest. She was so very tired, and after what she’d gone through to make this decision, she had earned a respite. But there was a fear, a niggling doubt in the back of her mind, that if she paused, she would lose her momentum and her nerve. Night was not a coward, but the ever present urge towards self-preservation could at any moment rise up to tug her away from her goal. She simply had to remember it was not for herself that she did this, and that it must be done. It must be done now. She had already delayed far too long.
The small knife at her waist, attached to the slim belt circling her tiny frame, was for little more than show. Sharp and deadly as it might have been, Nyx knew that it was not that weapon that would be her greatest ally in this endeavor. As prepared as she could be, she went to where they had come together. Not the desert in which they had first met, but to the house where he had taken her afterward. She did not want the intrusion of others, nor their watchful eyes, should she attempt to find him in his traditional home. This was better, this place on the mortal plane.
This was the den in which she would beard the great Lion of Sumer.