There's still life in the Armageddon

Evie

I dreamt in the sound of your voice

and bathed in the color of your love

She does remember, oddly enough. So many things made distant and faded with time, and yet the strangest things remain. "I was too," she reminds with a laugh. "Though it's always Deepfrost in Halo." A bit of cheekiness is lent to her smile, trying not to feel intimidated by the season her child had chosen to come in. Winter births in the Grounds had been incredibly risky; Evie has seen far too many go wrong. Knowing she won't even be able to help herself even with her own magic is terrifying - but they've done so much to improve the region that she is determined to have hope, to not have the shadow of the Grounds and all those superstitions hanging over her at such an important moment. "I wish Phoebe was still around. But I'll have people on hand all the same." The head of the infirmary, perhaps Hotaru if Deimos called for her in time, and of course Zuriel, whom Evie trusts more than any human healer. Who needs a midwife with the world's sharpest-edged magical mare to oversee her? Not Evie.

Evie giggles like a much younger girl as Maea kisses her cheek, brushing her nose against pale skin as it passes by her. It aches to know they could have had this in another life. Evie has ached for a life never lived, one as an Accepted, many times, but not lately. She has come to accept her fate. Now, she wishes they'd been less lonely together, that their hands hadn't been clasped with razors between, so that each time someone tried to squeeze tighter it only made their grip slicker with their own blood. But it wasn't too late for those scarred palms to meet again. Evie tells herself this with as much certainty as she can feel.

Evie snorts a small laugh at the brazen dumping of the rest of the ashes, watching quietly. "Dygra loves chaos I've heard, and that looks chaotic to me," she compliments with a grin, making it clear without saying outright that she is not offput by the new-old Goddess' desires and drives. Reaching out a hand, she smiles a little sardonically. "Care to help me up?" Pregnancy bellies are annoyingly obtrusive, or perhaps only hers, which seems to have only started catching up on size once she became aware of its existence.

And The most beautiful thought
Is the fact that I have always loved you