Elide
Elide lifts her chin and her eyes widen a bit, looking over the details of his grave expression, searching for some lie within it, some amount of scorn or disappointment. If he does feel those things, she can't tell. His words seem genuine and she will have to take them at face value.
That is certainly where she'd been wrong, in thinking that it would be a glorious victory, that it would feel triumphant. All she feels now is regret, and that can't be explained either because they had won... As far as any of them knew, the monsters were expunged from the earth and the world would be a safer place for it now. But none of that is able to really sink in.
"It feels as if we lost more than we gained," those lives snuffed out, whether they wanted to continue on or not, were still lives - and they were lives no more. "I thought I would be okay no matter the outcome, I thought, if I survived, I would be more prepared for future battles... but this feeling is hard to shake, and even harder to describe," she admits quietly, and in saying this she isn't attempting to spark an argument. Perhaps she's just desperate for the wisdom and experience she knows him to have, and her dark gaze turns hopeful for some sort of enlightenment. "It doesn't feel like success."
That is certainly where she'd been wrong, in thinking that it would be a glorious victory, that it would feel triumphant. All she feels now is regret, and that can't be explained either because they had won... As far as any of them knew, the monsters were expunged from the earth and the world would be a safer place for it now. But none of that is able to really sink in.
"It feels as if we lost more than we gained," those lives snuffed out, whether they wanted to continue on or not, were still lives - and they were lives no more. "I thought I would be okay no matter the outcome, I thought, if I survived, I would be more prepared for future battles... but this feeling is hard to shake, and even harder to describe," she admits quietly, and in saying this she isn't attempting to spark an argument. Perhaps she's just desperate for the wisdom and experience she knows him to have, and her dark gaze turns hopeful for some sort of enlightenment. "It doesn't feel like success."
never before had the song of war
been the song of hope ascending
been the song of hope ascending