Hotaru
It is difficult not to react. To both agree and deny, torn between aged loyalty that has always been the downfall of her heart, and motherly protectiveness that decrees Melita is to be believed without question and defended without end. “Perhaps. But do the people know that?” It’s an open-ended question; merely an exercise in awareness, to increase the care with which Melita traverses the world with. Because frankly, currently the honeybee has negative amounts of it. It’s giving Ru gray hairs.
“You would,” Ru agrees, pride overflowing on tongue and creasing eyes. She is proud of her strong girl. Bright and untouchable. Self-made. Where others fail - others Ru had once trusted to love and protect the girl - the Valkyrie will not. For now this is all she can offer; visits, embraces, wisdom and cautionary words. She hopes it is enough to remind Melita on nights when the house is too big, echoing in its emptiness, that she is not alone.
Fangorn’s swirling designs suddenly become far more interesting at the girl’s rebounded question. “I have lived an entire lifetime in areas of grey,” her tone is weary as it comes to being. “I am Frey’s. And Frey cares little about associations with Ascended, as Sunjata is testament to. I will cull those who threaten my loved ones, from either side and any race, but I don’t see why we cannot live and let live. Give them the Grounds and leave them to their lives. I cannot overlook that no matter what is said, they have a consciousness even if we are told they are not human. And I don’t believe in genocide.” Because she is a soft hearted fool where it matters, and she loves…too many of the Ascended. Incapable of even saying their names in her own mind. But even as a ruler of the Basin, Ru had not held the same disgust for the other races. How could she, when her mother had been one of them? That blood had been in her own veins regardless of how she had appeared physically.
Ru’s face goes stony. “But I do not trust The Voice. I cannot. Not after seeing what gods like her can do, how long they can lie low.” And maybe given years of peace Hotaru would relax a little, but for now she cannot. She can only see her dying children, the only world she’d ever known rotting and curling into darkness. “And in that way I would never encourage anyone to Ascend. But who am I to tell others what to do with their eternal souls? It’s not as if I have met Mort or Vi. Who is to say they are the ones in the right?” All of this really amounts to: she is in the middle, playing her own game, living only for herself and those she is loyal to. As Hotaru always has.
“You would,” Ru agrees, pride overflowing on tongue and creasing eyes. She is proud of her strong girl. Bright and untouchable. Self-made. Where others fail - others Ru had once trusted to love and protect the girl - the Valkyrie will not. For now this is all she can offer; visits, embraces, wisdom and cautionary words. She hopes it is enough to remind Melita on nights when the house is too big, echoing in its emptiness, that she is not alone.
Fangorn’s swirling designs suddenly become far more interesting at the girl’s rebounded question. “I have lived an entire lifetime in areas of grey,” her tone is weary as it comes to being. “I am Frey’s. And Frey cares little about associations with Ascended, as Sunjata is testament to. I will cull those who threaten my loved ones, from either side and any race, but I don’t see why we cannot live and let live. Give them the Grounds and leave them to their lives. I cannot overlook that no matter what is said, they have a consciousness even if we are told they are not human. And I don’t believe in genocide.” Because she is a soft hearted fool where it matters, and she loves…too many of the Ascended. Incapable of even saying their names in her own mind. But even as a ruler of the Basin, Ru had not held the same disgust for the other races. How could she, when her mother had been one of them? That blood had been in her own veins regardless of how she had appeared physically.
Ru’s face goes stony. “But I do not trust The Voice. I cannot. Not after seeing what gods like her can do, how long they can lie low.” And maybe given years of peace Hotaru would relax a little, but for now she cannot. She can only see her dying children, the only world she’d ever known rotting and curling into darkness. “And in that way I would never encourage anyone to Ascend. But who am I to tell others what to do with their eternal souls? It’s not as if I have met Mort or Vi. Who is to say they are the ones in the right?” All of this really amounts to: she is in the middle, playing her own game, living only for herself and those she is loyal to. As Hotaru always has.
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
