Evie
You thrill me, you delight me
You're all that I've been yearning for
Evie isn’t sure she agrees, and merely hums in response. Some days she definitely feels a sense of peace and closure knowing that the Grounds are thriving even if at the cost of being almost unrecognizable. Other days, she wishes it had dissolved into the sea and been lost forever, a skeleton best left in a closet. It’s why she still has a hard time visiting and she knows that will likely never change. You're all that I've been yearning for
Expression still distant and twisted with hurt, Evie exhales in a burst of bitter laughter. “Maea’s thinking has always been black and white, for better or worse.” It feels like her mother is talking through her, a trapped rat playing pretend at aristocracy, using superior education and supposedly superior breeding to cut people down without resorting to crassness and emotion. It feels horrible, but her mother had been right - it makes the hurt feel further away, like this isn’t personal anymore. At least this revulsion is familiar, a practiced sort of sickness that sits heavy in her stomach instead of her heart. “She probably can’t admit it would have been an empty sacrifice, because that would break the logic of her adamance that the only thing that matters about having morals is the performative part.” Maea had always been the feeble but ever present voice of rigidity in their youth for nearly all contentious topics; Abandoned, the Spire, the Voice, the fall of the barrier.
Evie had always been torn between grudging admiration and exasperation for Maea’s preoccupation with morality, especially given Maea had been so utterly fragile back then. Back then she’d thought it was stupid sure but she also thought it was brave. Evie isn’t sure any admiration remains now - she can only see the threat it poses. The cold reality is that the insular, social-economy structure of the Grounds had taught Maea to expect leniency for her behavior when they were really just dismissing her. Dahlia had been dismissing her too; the crucial difference is that the Reaper’s version of dismissal is the fatal kind. A fate that could have been extended to all of them on a whim, guilty by association they wouldn’t have even been granted the opportunity to dispute.
“Maybe it’s her predisposition with never getting to choose the way she dies or how she’s remembered. Maybe she truly doesn’t care about widespread impact. Maybe turning the other cheek is more terrifying than death for her.” She’s died enough times that she must be the authority on which is worse, right? So surely it grants her the power to make the choice for everyone else. It’s a thought too bitter to let slip, burning her tongue and threatening to break past her thin veneer of emotional detachment from it all.
Evie shrugs, but her eyes never leave the shifting light as the metal spins and spins and spins. “Maybe I don’t know her at all.” And maybe she shouldn’t be hurting, if that’s true. But she is. She is, and she feels unbearably foolish for having hoped so sincerely for friendship that she had eagerly opened the defenses that might have prevented the hurt from reaching this deep.
Curled beneath the dining chair, Micah leans his cheek against her ankle, his wordless consciousness reaching for her and pulling her up from wherever she had gone. Taking a deep breath as she finds herself back in her body all at once, Evie extends the measuring spoon toward Deimos to distract from her own struggling. Her smile is reserved, but at least it’s genuine. Some people do change, and Evie refuses to let her mother’s ghost - or Maea’s - take any more time from an afternoon meant for gratitude and peace. “Want to help me? The second one can be for Kiada.” A general gift, but also free data on whether spiced tea might appeal to Ancients at large, though she hopefully won’t be opening a tea shop until she’s properly old and grey.
I love you, I adore you - I lay my life before you
I only want you more and more
I only want you more and more
