[PQ] Dionysus Reborn

Vanya flashed a grin up at Bastien as he peered over her shoulder. She had just been drying another one of the many stories she'd heard in her life - this one about a man who was to be sacrificed to a dragon trucking the beast into devouring his captors and granted him a boon instead. It had been a favorite of Gideon's when he was small. "Wise?" she echoed with a smiling shake of her head. "Not a trait commonly attached to me."    The osprey accepted the drink, raised her glass in a toast, but it was to Ronin that she handed the glass to. She gave an apologetic shrug to Bastien as she did. "I'll have to come back and share a drink when the baby is born," she explained, watching as Remi downed his. "Should have offered it to you Remi," she quipped lighty. If there was one thing Northwind had been advanced in, it was medicine simply due to the seemingly all-powerful healers that could detect and heal any ailment or pain or ache - even death was not beyond their limits. Learning that alcohol was bad for pregnancies from one such healer when her father's second wife fell pregnant with Saiden had been confusing, but she would stand by it now at least.    She raised a brow as paints were displayed, canvases ready, and.. shirts came off. It was to Ronin that her eyes fell, something in her warming as it always did when he smiled at her, and she caught his shirt with a playful wrinkle of her nose. Well, if everyone was going to be without their shorts, she wasn't going to be wasting the opportunity to be dressed as she usually would be, and that was hardly dressed at all. While it was growing too cold outside to leave her skin free to the air, it was comfortable here, and she shrugged out of her own shirt without a moment'd hesitation. Not showing yet, she was all too happy to display herself in only the wrappings of fabric around her breasts. She was a Hali, and the Hali family were made up of beautiful people.    Now, painting.... that was another matter entirely. Vanya had made large and colorful flyers before, but her artistic skill started and ended with that. She frowned at the blank canvas, knowing she could form no shapes or scenes that would be recognizable,  but... Vanya picked up a wide brush, dipped it into the blue paint, and touched it to the canvas. She made broad, sweeping strokes, mixing whites and yellows the further up she moved. It would be like being beneath the water, looking up to the sun shining down through the surface. As she was working on the brightest part of the messy painting, she spared a glance for Ronin and his.. and she paused. "The Siren's Call," she said quietly, and her chest tightened. Her ship. She smiled, fighting against the quite suddenly overwhelming emotion in her - pregnancy did that, she recalled - and she placed her brush down to step over to him, brushing. Hand over his arm as she took in the painting - a recreation. "You paint better birds than I do," she said, glancing at him. vanya I've got a love like religion.