There's still life in the Armageddon

Evie

I dreamt in the sound of your voice

and bathed in the color of your love

The visual differences are shocking, yes, but Evie is surprised to find they are not overtly so. Perhaps it's because it has been eight years already, and she had thought Maea to be long dead. Time, appreciation for life, whatever it was; Evie finds herself looking upon the loreseeker with fresh eyes. Much is familiar, and she can't deny that - she'd known Maea most of her young life after all. Yet age alone could make a person seem new and unknown, and Evie is grateful for the chance to take it all in anew if nothing else.

Her differences in demeanor are obvious, but Evie suspects her own are the same, and determinedly does not make comparisons or other assumptions based on them. Instead, she takes the time she's given to peruse the dress to inhale the hot, humid air slowly, considering.

"Well that's a bit of a shame, but at least it will be for a good cause. You can always have another made," she points out, assuming Maea could return to the seamstress or shop where she'd purchased it if she'd become attached to the garment. The offer to help has her eyes coming back to Maea, unaware of the scrutiny she'd been subjected to. Her smile is warm and loosely graceful in a way it had never been in her youth; eternal strictures of mockery or otherwise tightly held in manners that would please her practically-royal parents. "Sure. What can I do?" Evie has tuned her mind for healing and politics for years before she even saw Maea in the caverns below Halo - when she'd been Loren's right hand, and had needed all her wiles and wits to convince tight-lipped Halovians to allow her to treat them. Perhaps giving Maea some power to wield will allow the both of them to loosen up.

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