{se} Trees in a Storm

Hotaru

Tonight, you look so lovely
It's your eyes that define me

Seeing Maea playful and confident is a pleasant change, and Hotaru can only titter and concede with a pleased smile and a flush of self-assured satisfaction on her pretty face. An expression that becomes playfully deadpan as Maea looks straight at her stomach, lips twitching helplessly as she tries to keep her face reproachful even when her shoulders shake.

"No, not that," she laughs, smile finally breaking through. "Sunny will need to properly go down on one knee before I even think about that." Which is perhaps strange given the way their relationship looks from the outside - sleeping with clients together and apart - but she had laid claim to his heart and his alone, and until they devoted to one another permanently she would not even consider bringing another life into the world.

Hotaru lets Maea guide her backward, blindly trusting and sunlit radiance strengthening as it washes back over her skin. "It is related to my appearance though. Frey asked me to be their demigod, and I accepted." There is a reverence to her tone that might seem out of place to those unaware of how faithful a woman Hotaru is, but it's clear how happy she is with the offer, the acceptance, the change. Even if she does not linger or expand upon it, allowing Maea to ask her own questions and contend with her own reactions. Instead, she looks out over the woods and the sunny glen she has chosen, and her smiles becomes softer, sadder. "The twins were born in the Greatwood. And Mort brought Enzo to us as a family, so we could say goodbye. I owe Ludo and Mort a great deal for that alone." She will remember her son's warm arms and last words until the day she meets him in Mort's realm.