a day once dawned

Hotaru For a moment, so absorbed in watching the miniscule flickers in Deimos' face, she wonders why fate brought them all here. Whether the forces that rule the larger realm had seen them undeserving of peace in the afterlife. Whether the Voice had the power to steal them from other lands, and what she had wanted them for in the first place. Surely this couldn't all be happenstance? She had wandered so many realms before finally finding her family here. Hotaru doesn't know what their purpose is here, but she knows how Kiada feels. How Deimos feels. Knows she would have run into that blaze herself if Kiada had not been there to change the tides of her machinations. She smiles, slight and a little sad though it may be, at his choice of words. "It can certainly seem an affliction at times. Others, it's all that seems to keep me tethered here." Here, and not somewhere else. Floating, drifting, giving up on life that no longer had meaning with all she had lost. If she had not found him, found Kiada and Rexanna, would she have kept going? She had been so tired, so lost. Without the buoy of their love, their conviction, their fire...would she have fades away as well? Hotaru likes to think she wouldn't have. But she's not really sure. It had been a very dark period after Helovia had fallen and she had lost her children, twin, and lover in one fell swoop. It's why she empathises with the rugged man before her, when his eyes narrow and drop from her own. Relinquishing her teacup, she reaches forward to lay her hand gently on top of his. She may be small, can see how his hand dwarfs her own, but she is strong. She will help him bear this. "We can hold a ceremony, if you'd like. He deserved more than what he received. He was our brother, no matter his affiliation." Hotaru doesn't know the ways of this land, if there is a graveyard where they can place an honorary stone perhaps or something of the like. But she gently squeezes his hand before she departs. "We did all we could. He would have known that, he was practically revered for his ridiculous kindness." Notions and titles far purer than theirs had been, Valkyrie and Reaper both. Heralders of death and chaos. Cera would not have held his death against them, even if they had intentionally left the door closed to him.