love, death and robots

// now I've been crazy, couldn't you tell? //

Maea was silent for a long time. Staring hard at the wood grain of the bar like the winding patterns held some riddle she had to puzzle out, the muscles of her jaws kept clenching and easing as she worked through what was being said. Separating her own wants from the good of the region, sorting out and discarding bitterness and ire that had no place in this conversation. It wasn't Flora, she decided, but the Family that was the source and recipient of it. Because of the Family, a perfectly wonderful region was prevented from flourishing just because of the attention it 'might' draw, she was denied a chance to build rather than merely destroy, and ignoring the warning just to try it anyway would be no different than what she'd done at that stupid meeting; just forging ahead without thought, leaving others to clean up her mess. Because who could fix what wound up breaking in the end? Not Maea or Liam, that was for certain.

"Make it, you're a hero, break it and you're worse than a martyr," she muttered mostly to herself, like a mantra. A harsh sigh expelled some of the tension, though the grim expression didn't lift from her face. "And? What do you recommend I do instead? Go back to Torchline to keep hiding while others do the heavy lifting in this war?" It wouldn't be that different from anything she was doing here, granted... and the taste of that was beyond even bitterness. It smacked of shame so thick and vile it twisted her lips in revulsion.

Maea

// I threw stones at the stars but the whole sky fell //