Hotaru
Hotaru kneels patiently by Melita’s side, weathering the silence as the girl clearly struggles with her initial, automatic reactions. It inspires a quiet sort of pride in her. Melita may not be able to control her expressions - far too used to wearing her emotions on her sleeve, shameless and bright - but she is becoming tempered steel with age instead of the molten fire she used to be.
She is both surprised and not by the honeybee’s answer. So for a moment she merely nods slowly, accepting and free of judgment or physical, outward reaction that may imply it. Heedless of her pale dress she folds her ash-stained hands in her lap. The question the girl asks heavy in her mind.
“It does. To me especially.” Because it’s you, goes unsaid, the girl easy with Ru’s physical affections but easy to fluster into denial with words much like Deimos. “You saw the mob that was so easily stirred up against Sunjata. The Priest who has appeared and preached twice now on the streets of Torchline when he was Governor and who Nate nearly attacked I heard. These were all public events.” Events Ru is unsure if Melita was there for, but which nearly all Torchers had heard of at least secondhand. “Now they are both demigods for deities opposing each other. And you - you are publicly known as someone close to them. Someone they care for.” Sighing, Hotaru lifts her gaze, and it is cold and sharp with far too much knowledge. “If it were me, I would certainly strike you down if it meant injuring them in turn. Ensuring their grief weakened them.”
She blinks and softens, no longer the rigid, regal creature that had peered in from the past. “And maybe it’s just my paranoia, I don’t suspect any major players to do so,” and she is too trusting in that, but she doesn’t see Wessex or the other Ascended doing it, “but you are loyal to Ludo as you said. People don’t need guidance or commands to feel what they are doing is correct if it is on behalf of their god.” Fanatics existed in both camps, super-powered and civilian alike. And had they not already seen firsthand the power of a mob? One that had even the most pitifully minor of magics and items?
She is both surprised and not by the honeybee’s answer. So for a moment she merely nods slowly, accepting and free of judgment or physical, outward reaction that may imply it. Heedless of her pale dress she folds her ash-stained hands in her lap. The question the girl asks heavy in her mind.
“It does. To me especially.” Because it’s you, goes unsaid, the girl easy with Ru’s physical affections but easy to fluster into denial with words much like Deimos. “You saw the mob that was so easily stirred up against Sunjata. The Priest who has appeared and preached twice now on the streets of Torchline when he was Governor and who Nate nearly attacked I heard. These were all public events.” Events Ru is unsure if Melita was there for, but which nearly all Torchers had heard of at least secondhand. “Now they are both demigods for deities opposing each other. And you - you are publicly known as someone close to them. Someone they care for.” Sighing, Hotaru lifts her gaze, and it is cold and sharp with far too much knowledge. “If it were me, I would certainly strike you down if it meant injuring them in turn. Ensuring their grief weakened them.”
She blinks and softens, no longer the rigid, regal creature that had peered in from the past. “And maybe it’s just my paranoia, I don’t suspect any major players to do so,” and she is too trusting in that, but she doesn’t see Wessex or the other Ascended doing it, “but you are loyal to Ludo as you said. People don’t need guidance or commands to feel what they are doing is correct if it is on behalf of their god.” Fanatics existed in both camps, super-powered and civilian alike. And had they not already seen firsthand the power of a mob? One that had even the most pitifully minor of magics and items?
from the base of her neck to the arch of her eyelids
her beauty made a slave of me
her beauty made a slave of me
