knocking on fate's door

and look for the stars as the sun goes down
each breath that you take has a thunderous sound

Oh, but he couldn't needle her more if he was doing it on purpose (though perhaps he is). Amalia resists the urge to squirm or bare her teeth beneath his denim gaze, feeling very much like an insect under the microscope of his quiet disdain. The anxious part of her that yearns to have a place here gnaws and bites and threatens to drown her, shifting like a roaring monster and rising up in screaming anger. She was placed here by Vi, as the man has made clear, and yet all she's managed to do is fail at fitting in or doing right.

It's swallowed down, though as usual the struggle makes its way into her face, in the way her jaw clenches and her skin tightens around her eyes. "Am I not a member of the Order?" she asks, blinking at Cian. As for questions of Vi, Amalia tenses again. "I do not doubt Vi's choices," she murmurs tersely, thorns budding in a half-crown behind her ears. "But I do not expect the gods to solve all my problems. Their work is greater than my needs."

Amalia

everyone's a whore

"Certainly not." The Eye replies with a small smile as his head shakes. "The Order is...more intricate than you perhaps give us credit for. We are not a mob tossed together, nor a group of thugs. And we are certainly not a group that even the likes of Vi can force membership." Cian opens his hands in an almost apologetic gesture.

"Perhaps it is best then that those needs play second fiddle to Vi's then, eh?" Cian offers, sounding almost genuine. The irish-lilt of his accent has the ability to do that. "We'll speak soon, I'm sure."

And with that, the Eye unequivocably ends the conversation with a polite smile and a return to whatever it was he was doing before Amalia had entered.

~FIN

THE EYE

we just sell different parts of ourselves