[se] we can't go on together

Hotaru

Somewhere my lifeline still hums and sings
In the mess of all I have thrown away

Noah is not much of an actor, though it’s a fond, sad thought as she watches him struggle to be happy from the corner of her eye as she focuses on her kite bobbing overhead. Still, it’s a facade she doesn’t want to exist between them, no matter how difficult it may be to talk openly about it. “I understand if you don’t agree, or approve,” she remarks quietly. It will not stop her - not if even Deimos’ disapproval wouldn’t - but she can understand their reticence. “However, I owe it to myself and to Enzo to try. He asked me to live, to be happy. If I am wrong, at least I will have tried.” And part of her - a part she doesn’t let free, never shares with her loved ones - still can’t bear to walk through the Citadel, unable to stop seeing the spot where Flora teleported in with Enzo in her arms. It’s why she’d thrown herself so fully into the Academy, comforted by the way it kept the world at large away from her eyes.

Flora is indeed a safe topic, as Ru could surely talk about her for hours. “Immensely,” she laughs, trying to follow his lead and lighten the mood. “I worry of course, and think she is rather young, but I can’t deny her ambition - plus, I’d be a hypocrite given how young I was when I began ruling as well.” It feels like lifetimes ago. Given how many portals she fell through before Caido, it’s not an inappropriate comparison. “She is better than me in every way, as I had hoped. If I could do it, I have full faith she can too.” Pulling on her string slightly as she smirks up at the sky, a slow bloom of protectiveness unfurls faintly through the bond he might feel from her. “And if she encounters any problems, she has quite the parental force behind her.” Ru might not be able to get there immediately in the same way channeling her father might, but not all things require immediate intervention. If her daughter ever shows a need for the slower, more insidious kind of planning that ruling might bring, Hotaru will happily provide both mind and might in the Doubletake’s service.

Hungry now,
I am gathering new seeds to throw wide