REXANNA
paint my spirit gold
She noticed him lean into her touch, and she wanted to hug him tight and let him fall apart with her – to be a person for him to lean on whenever he needed it. But she’d decided to let him figure out when that would be and whom it would be with. If it wasn’t her, she didn’t mind, so long as he didn’t keep it bottled up. She knew he’d have to let it out at some point. But Remi spoke of his worries, then, and she listened with ears wide open, nodding to him when he spoke of responsibility.But then he wanted to be sure that she was Ronin’s daughter, and not Remi’s. To which Rexanna nodded. Her entire world had been sent upside down because of that confusion – because of growing up thinking those that raised you were your parents, when your true parents had been murdered not long after your birth. She inhaled deeply, but she offered him a small smile. “She will know it. When she gets older, she’ll have questions and you’re responsibility is to tell her how great her parents were.” She offered.
Too soon, however, she was shaking the little rattler in front of the child, her hand shaking ever so slightly and she silently thanked the gods that Remi hadn’t seen it as he spoke to something else? Her eyes lifted and she spotted a curious creature approach with wariness in its gaze. Remi spoke sternly to it, and Rexanna’s gaze lifted to him at that point with so many questions on her lips. “Is that… A dragon?” She asked, almost hushed and bewildered. She’d only ever heard stories, seen illustrations in books of what they may have looked like. But she never knew they existed.
But Remi laughed, and spoke of Aoife and Rexanna found her gaze dancing back to the child as she shook the rattle a bit more trying to see if she’d grasp onto it and shake it, too. For a moment, Rexanna wasn’t sure what she could do with a child this young, and so with gentle soft hands she reached out toward Aoife’s hand with the rattle in one and nothing in the other and showed her how she might grip it. All the while, she listened to Remi and laughed quietly along with him.
“No, I never met Vanya unfortunately.” She said quietly, but as she thought of Ronin, she glanced back up to Remi with a small crooked smile. “I never officially met Ronin either. But the two of them certainly made a gorgeous child.” She said with a small nod, looking back to Aoife and reaching out to feel the softness of her dark curls when she noticed the stars in her eyes. “Her… eyes?” She stuttered for a moment, taken a bit aback and looking to Remi with questioning eyes. Her hand still trembling, but despite her anxiety toward this she knew she needed it. And gods was she trying.
