AMALIA
save some love for yourself, my dear
Amalia accepts this answer easily, her belief and plot devices allowing her to take nearly all that Safrin tells her on faith. As the goddess' fingers caress her fur Amalia leans into it, purring loudly and tilting her cheek up into the hand. Still scarred from shrapnel she is at least healed, not bleeding or broken as she had been.
Not without, at least.
Safrin's gentle contradiction makes perfect sense, only confirming Amalia's thoughts and frustrations on the matter. Whoever it was among the Ascended, whichever coward valued their own life more than that of the many who die every year... well. And yet it is they, Amalia and Ronin and Jigano and Remi and the others whom the Voice decries, who are left to clean the mess.
Looking back up at the goddess' face, the Shield whuffs softly in bashful amusement. I... suppose. A hair, but no closer. I don't think that path is for me. Leadership, queenship, politics- they are not the things Amalia wants. Both too humble and too ambitious, she dreams of something more.
The darkness lingers, creeping ever inward, and in this cool and comforting place Amalia allows herself to indulge the exhaustion and trauma that has haunted her steps since the longest night began. Closing her eyes, the Shield goes so far as to lean against Safrin's leg. I held a boy in my arms as he died. Her mental voice is pained and trembling, the fractures of her trauma laid bare before her goddess. I saw a father hold his dead daughter... then join her, just to hurt Ronin. The ghost of Aoife haunted every step he took, and I... She could do nothing, but that isn't the point. She is not here to wallow in her own failures.
Not anymore.
If the Ascended won't stop the monsters, then maybe the rest of us can.
Not without, at least.
Safrin's gentle contradiction makes perfect sense, only confirming Amalia's thoughts and frustrations on the matter. Whoever it was among the Ascended, whichever coward valued their own life more than that of the many who die every year... well. And yet it is they, Amalia and Ronin and Jigano and Remi and the others whom the Voice decries, who are left to clean the mess.
Looking back up at the goddess' face, the Shield whuffs softly in bashful amusement. I... suppose. A hair, but no closer. I don't think that path is for me. Leadership, queenship, politics- they are not the things Amalia wants. Both too humble and too ambitious, she dreams of something more.
The darkness lingers, creeping ever inward, and in this cool and comforting place Amalia allows herself to indulge the exhaustion and trauma that has haunted her steps since the longest night began. Closing her eyes, the Shield goes so far as to lean against Safrin's leg. I held a boy in my arms as he died. Her mental voice is pained and trembling, the fractures of her trauma laid bare before her goddess. I saw a father hold his dead daughter... then join her, just to hurt Ronin. The ghost of Aoife haunted every step he took, and I... She could do nothing, but that isn't the point. She is not here to wallow in her own failures.
Not anymore.
If the Ascended won't stop the monsters, then maybe the rest of us can.
