is this a trick

JUNIPER

you think i'm happy because i'm smiling,
but it's the easiest thing to do

Juniper didn't spend much time in Ludo's woods; her family might be dead, but she didn't visit them often. She hadn't had much to tell them about her life, after all, nothing that might soothe the dead, and she didn't find contemplating them particularly comforting either. But today was different: today she'd come to leave flowers at her grandfather's grave, to tell his spirit of her recent work, so that perhaps he would know that reaching out to outsiders was no longer such a crime.

As Juniper laid the flowers down and was about to start speaking to her grandfather's spirit, she heard a call -- a woman's voice, so she didn't mistake it for her dead grandfather. It was too loud, too clamorous in the hush of the woods, and Juniper turned in annoyance to tell the speaker to show a little respect for the dead, only to pause when she noticed the woman's lack of wings.

"Who are you?"

if you looked a little closer,
you'd find my eyes aren't smiling too.

table by Skylark