// May the road rise up to meet you //
Holding Thalassa's gaze for a long moment, Maea finally nodded, accepting her word for it. Reaching for the tea cup, she didn't drink but held it in her hands, rolling the hot clay between her palms as she sorted through events she had done her utmost to erase from memory. Turns out, they lay bubbling just beneath the surface. Harder to erase than scars or bloodstains – or bodies.
"If you recall, I was working at the bar over LongNight. I was a mess, and tried to cope by keeping busy. I pulled extra shifts, barely slept, what sleep I did get was poor - nightmares - and as you know I'm not fond of the kind of attention staff get at the Dusklight. This one guy had been staring at me for hours, it felt like, and I tried to ignore it, but as I was collecting dishes around the booths, he cornered me." Eyes going distant, a haunted look came over her, face going ashen. "Asta noticed in time, and pulled him off me. There was a fight. In the end, his cronies were thrown out, he was jailed, and Asta offered me to stay in his room to get some rest." Round and round the cup went. The edge of the water rimmed the edge most precisely, a fraction of a millimeter from spilling. Just as her emotions, she kept them in check. As tightly strapped down and locked in as Thal's were roiling on the surface. They were two sides of a coin, in that way. Pure opposites.
"After a while, Asta said he would go and take care of something, and left. I can't tell you why I followed him. Maybe I had a suspicion as to what he was up to. Maybe I wanted to be proven wrong. Maybe I was just too scared to be alone with what had just... happened. I honestly don't know. But I did go after him. His tracks led outside, to the jail. There, through a window, I saw that mage chained to a wall. I couldn't hear what they were saying, but after a while Asta drew a dagger, drove it into the man, and began to carve pieces out of him. While he was still alive." Sitting quiet for a moment, a slow breath kept the prickly nausea at bay.
"I must have made some noise when I ran, because a short while later Asta found me. I said some pretty horrible things, most of which I don't recall, but the concensus is that I asked why he did it, he called it justice, and when I disagreed he said that was how things worked in the Grounds now whether I liked it or not. Later when I told Danta what happened, he said more or less the same thing, and that since Dygra wouldn't mind their actions, then neither should I." Paraphrasing for lack of the exact wording, Maea turned her gaze on Thalassa again for the first time since she began talking, eyes flat; made emotionless by the expert way she sealed her emotions off even from herself. "That is the source of the argument. Any questions, or shall I move on?"
"If you recall, I was working at the bar over LongNight. I was a mess, and tried to cope by keeping busy. I pulled extra shifts, barely slept, what sleep I did get was poor - nightmares - and as you know I'm not fond of the kind of attention staff get at the Dusklight. This one guy had been staring at me for hours, it felt like, and I tried to ignore it, but as I was collecting dishes around the booths, he cornered me." Eyes going distant, a haunted look came over her, face going ashen. "Asta noticed in time, and pulled him off me. There was a fight. In the end, his cronies were thrown out, he was jailed, and Asta offered me to stay in his room to get some rest." Round and round the cup went. The edge of the water rimmed the edge most precisely, a fraction of a millimeter from spilling. Just as her emotions, she kept them in check. As tightly strapped down and locked in as Thal's were roiling on the surface. They were two sides of a coin, in that way. Pure opposites.
"After a while, Asta said he would go and take care of something, and left. I can't tell you why I followed him. Maybe I had a suspicion as to what he was up to. Maybe I wanted to be proven wrong. Maybe I was just too scared to be alone with what had just... happened. I honestly don't know. But I did go after him. His tracks led outside, to the jail. There, through a window, I saw that mage chained to a wall. I couldn't hear what they were saying, but after a while Asta drew a dagger, drove it into the man, and began to carve pieces out of him. While he was still alive." Sitting quiet for a moment, a slow breath kept the prickly nausea at bay.
"I must have made some noise when I ran, because a short while later Asta found me. I said some pretty horrible things, most of which I don't recall, but the concensus is that I asked why he did it, he called it justice, and when I disagreed he said that was how things worked in the Grounds now whether I liked it or not. Later when I told Danta what happened, he said more or less the same thing, and that since Dygra wouldn't mind their actions, then neither should I." Paraphrasing for lack of the exact wording, Maea turned her gaze on Thalassa again for the first time since she began talking, eyes flat; made emotionless by the expert way she sealed her emotions off even from herself. "That is the source of the argument. Any questions, or shall I move on?"
Maea
// May the wind be at your back //
