A light tap on your shoulder. You turn around to see Hecate staring at you with wide eyes one single exposed eye, sketchbook held open, pen poised as though to take notes. If you don’t shoo her away, she’ll take that as permission, clearing her throat softly.
“I’m doing a research,” she tells you. “What do you think happiness is?”
It was the girl with the silent disposition, yet Stargazer knew behind the single visible eye there was an inquisitive soul. Sensitive to the matters of the heart, yet aloof in the ways she handled things. It was such a curious juxtaposition between her comprehension and expression.
A smile tugged at the corners of her lips at the question, raising a golden claw to her chin in thought.
"A rather curious question. Yet I cannot help but question it as well."
Right there and then, Stargazer was content. But happiness?
"'tis only something someone who has known joy to answer. I genuinely wonder if it is the kind of feeling I have been pursuing all my life... with the idea that somebody special would accept me, or the feeling of family and belonging."
Her blue eyes darted across all directions, as if to recall any memories of such, but indirectly, it was also to avoid the penetrating, questioning gaze of the girl's.
"Perhaps I do not know the answer, for I have not quite felt it. I do not know the weight of loneliness even in isolation, and I do not know the meaning of joy. Feelings... are double-edged swords."