[Mini Event] Midwinter Conference

Evie

I dreamt in the sound of your voice

and bathed in the color of your love

Evie's eyes are taken from Deimos' broad back toward Flora as a soft noise is uttered, and her heart swells until it nearly breaks with sudden emotion for this young woman she hardly knows. Her mind briefly takes her back to Cordelia - one of her own citizens - fleeing the Citadel gates in the middle of a siege while Evie engaged the banshee that had wounded her with nothing but a shield and the determination to keep safe the woman that abandoned her without a second glance. The family had insisted it was to uphold a vow to remain alive no matter the cost - claiming her cowardice was somehow courageous. But what is true courage if not this? To give Evie and her son an escape that closes off that avenue entirely for Flora, while the greatest threat they know stands in the room with them? They scarcely know one another, and yet this young woman who has so much to lose and so much ahead of her offers salvation without a moment's hesitation?

As words unravel and a different avenue of freedom is secured, Evie's eyes don't leave Flora's. She reaches, and her hand gently moves the compass back into the Doubletake's hand, keeping it concealed by smoothing her fingers up the woman's hand to squeeze her wrist as if that was the initial plan. Keep it. Use it yourself. And beneath that, the Evergreen's blue eyes are veritable oceans of gratitude.

Dantalion's well-concealed chivalry prompts much the same. She scarcely knows him either, bear trap stories aside, but Evie can affect a mean-girl persona with the best of them. Sniffing in offense, nose to the ceiling, Evie peers at him from the corner of her eye as she walks past her husband - brushing his elbow in one last touch - and tucks Erebos closer to her chest. "He is also my infant, though mothers never get any of the credit," she huffs, following in Maea's and Hadama's wake. "Good luck getting him to do the speaking portion, there's a reason there's two of us." The humor would land better if it wasn't so fake, but all the best lies and performances have some kernel of truth, and Deimos' brand of diplomacy is rather straightforward.

As she moves past the group in the entryway her heart nearly bursts, and though she doesn't hold the same disdain for Sunjata she knows her life - all their lives - are currently in his palms, and trusting him to be the closest capable of intervening as she makes her exit is not something she's truly capable of. As she walks out she hears her husband's last, dry comment, and she disappears into the snow - away from Hadama and Maea - praying to every god that's never listened to her before that it won't be the last time she hears him at all.

- Evie out!

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