Hotaru
nothing's fair in love and war
The rebuttal seems well-practiced, if misguided, and Hotaru peers through the curtain of her hair with a neutral expression. Thinking. Does she care enough to offer a hand down to the woman in the mire? Can she see past her own bias against The Voice? Well, yes. She is irrevocably tied to Nate and Wessex, for better or worse, past and present. Kiada, too, though the girl has all but abandoned the Valkyrie in the wake of her death and resurrection. But what use are her words to Maea? Are they anything more than acquaintances, despite the trailing ribbon-ends of emotion between them? “Did you come back less, or was the slate merely wiped clean? There is always a trade to be made. Do you value your magic more, or a life that - with so much ahead of it - can earn it back? Will you look backward or forward?” It is spoken softly, just as neutral as her pretty face that bows back towards the deer’s carcass to allow Maea a chance to consider the words. “If I gave up when I lost my magic, the Goddess who gave me everything, my entire home world when I was brought here, I would never have been reunited with my family that made it out.” Maea had lost Ludo’s favor, but at least the deity still lived. “If I had given up when my children were murdered at the same time I lost all of that, I never would have had the children I was blessed with here.” Sitting back, she ties her hair back, annoyed with how it gets in her face. Blood stains the pale golden strands freely. Turning to look at Maea, she quirks a small smile. “I’m not the one to speak to about moving on from loss or feeling hollow. Either you move forward, or you do not. My words don’t matter in the grand scheme of your new life.” Grasping her knife, she returns to the deer, as if she’d never spoken at all.
“And isn’t that freeing, you think? To finally live for yourself, instead of someone who wouldn’t devote themselves to you?” Pausing, she looks up, hands buried in the deer’s entrails. Eyes sharp and strange. “I think it is.” And she’s still learning, herself, but it’s a lesson that becomes easier with time.
But she has said enough. More than. Presumptuous woman, as always, a voice that sounds like hers and her mothers simultaneously tsks in her head. “Good. He has found his happiness. It’s time you found yours, no?”
