Nowhere Else to Go...for Now...

vervain It would be a lie to say that the idea of her daughter being beyond salvation didn't send an icy shard right into Vai's heart... but this wasn't about her right now. It wasn't about Ashetta either. Her daughter's demons were many and they were strong, but it simply wasn't fair to ask or assume or hope that one man could forsake himself in order to keep them from baying at her door. "It's okay, Al," she murmured, smiling sadly and nodding to him as if to absolve him of any embarrassment. "I know you didn't mean it like that. I hope for her to be happy, too... but I also hope for you to be happy, more than anything." She shot a smirk right back at him as he decided on a change of subject, Vai reaching out to top up his drink almost as if she had been waiting for it. If Alistair got drunk enough to need to be carried away home, she'd do it - just this once. Especially given that she was the one plying him with it. To hear that he'd seen his father, though... Vervain tilted her head, sinking down onto a barstool opposite him, fingers drumming musically against the bottle. "You mean to say your birth father?" She resisted the urge to ask how he knew it was him, swallowing her questions down to listen to the rest of the tale. "Madness... that's certainly one word for it, Al," she murmured, leaning an elbow on the counter. "But madness doesn't give you evidence, does it? You say you have the mask at home... it can't have been anything but reality, if that's true. And we were pulled here at random, for a reason we still don't know... is it truly so far-fetched?" In the grand scheme of things, it didn't sound that bad actually. "What does it do? The mask, I mean. What does it look like?"