EVIE
there ain't no doubt in no ones mind
It’s perhaps the strangest sensation she’s ever experienced, and laughter ekes out here and there as her hair is manipulated, sudsed, and eventually artfully designed into sleek buns on the sides of her head. “I am genuinely impressed you could do that, but now I want you to always do it.” Though she’d miss the feeling of his hands far too much and she knows it. Half the reason she keeps her hair so long is to luxuriate in the moments when he plays with it - even though she’d debated chopping it during Erebos’ grabbing phase. She wishes the world would leave them alone more often than it does - which is just about never - because the simple domesticity of the moment is so precious that it leaves all the greater an ache as it slips away. Though she feels a touch of shame at her selfishness in feeling that as Noah’s own grief and loss is held up like a mirror against it.
Evie is perhaps the most conflicted of anyone to hear of Cordelia’s death. She’d risked everything in her attempt to reach the woman and heal her that fateful day of the siege on the wall, only to watch her retreating figure as she ran away, leaving Evie to kill the banshee queen with only Talyson at her side - someone she didn’t think she could trust to watch her back. The betrayal of it had carved out a hollow piece inside her toward the woman, though she’d never let it change how she’d interacted with her in the brief, civil passings they’d had thereafter. But to know she is dead…and to know that she leaves behind a devoted husband who will mourn her eternally, and two children who will struggle to recall her face and voice for how young they are still…it inspires a secondhand, empathetic grief that she has far too much experience with. The Grounds had provided more than its fair share of that feeling in her lifetime.
“Neither am I,” she admits quietly, watching her crimson hair slip over his wet fingers but not truly seeing it. “Though we’re both rather known for holding grudges.” Even after all the work she’s done to try and uproot it in herself it’s hard to remove something that had once also been a defense mechanism. “You don’t have to be the same kind of friends though. You can plant new seeds in razed soil and still grow something, even if it won’t be the same as what you had before.” Plant analogies spring eternal with the Evergreen, but it’s easier than attempting to rely on lived experience she simply doesn’t have. Her friend list has never exceeded a number greater than three at one time. “Trying doesn’t have to mean overlooking. You aren’t the type, and I hope he’d know that.” Though, given the incidents that had set the two apart, maybe she shouldn’t give that sort of credit. “But if he seems to want it too, and you’re willing to at least try, maybe you can rebuild something even if it won’t be as close or as trusting.”
that love's the finest thing around
