Hotaru
angels would damn themselves for me
She tracks him with her eyes, stillness evaporating like mist beneath sunlight now that he has arrived, almost like he’d awoken her from some kind of trance. This too is a stark reminder of all she has been missing, just as Talyson’s presence had been. Ru has few needs in life, and fewer still that are shared with the general populace, but perhaps age has softened her because it seems her tolerance for solitude has waned over the years. Nearly a year in the Greatwood and here she returns. Inexorable. Fated. Inevitable. Reminded of her own brew, she takes a slow sip as she contemplates his question. “The choice was made for me in many ways,” she utters quietly, gaze distant. A house missing young voices - Flora and Enzo. The smell of ink on vellum - Wessex. The empty house where a friend once lived - Vai. All of them gone in one way or another. Until there is only Ru. Always, only Ru.
A new page. The same story.
So she goes back to the only thing that was ever hers, the only place that has ever felt like home. If the story is to repeat on loop, at least she can bear it from the comfort of the land she loves.
“I think I always knew I’d come back, I just wasn’t sure I was ready before.” Not after the coup, the birth of the twins, the sickness, and then…the settling. Growing used to the stagnancy, even as she detested it. And then, again, the doubt. Her growing affections for Wessex, Nate’s fall in Stormbreak. But here she returns, always back to the ice and snow. Always left behind even when she entertained thoughts of waiting, of changing. So she would wait no more.
