#softsmile

It takes him back to the bloodied sands in the aftermath of the massacre. A battlefield strewn with Leonster bodies, forever to be buried in the desert where the scavengers can feed off their bones. But of course, nothing is ‘forever’. Nothing can be willed to last ‘forever’.

Seeing her again is like watching his very efforts crumble before his eyes. Was it all for naught? Is this truly the purgatory set before him? Why? Why? Why?! How long does someone need to be lifeless before they are given the final pass into the afterlife… A decade? A century? Hell, bring back Dainn and Njorun themselves, why don’t they! Does this place have it out for him that it would bring Altena's own mother back from the dead?!

Amongst the madness, the devilish laugh that escapes him seems to have drawn the attention of that woman. Might as well get what little entertainment he has while the moment lasts.

The wrinkles beneath his eyes deepen, smile wide as if he were meeting with an old friend.  “Heh heh heh… Hahaha! So… You’re alive too. What are the odds?” 

What are the odds, indeed?

That laugh sends chills down her spine. It can't be, can it? She knows it can. As long as she's standing here, breathing, she knows anything can happen.

When she turns around, she finds herself face to face with the devil himself.

"You!" She marches up to him, shoulders back and head held high. Even if she can remember the sounds of her daughter's cries mixed with screeching wyverns as if it was just yesterday, she isn't afraid of him. "You dastard!"

He smiles at her as if he is enjoying this and she desperately wants to slap the grin from his face. It's some kind of joke. All of the joy and relief she felt when Finn reentered her life had given her hope. Now he's here too. It's some sort of cruel joke.

Adjusting to the light, her light, his smile faltered. No. Mankind had stitched her out of the dredges of charity. Compassion. Mercy. Insufferable traits.

He has never been one for small talk. So he blinked at her. And his smile reformed.

"Julius? Julius!"

The sight of him was at once a welcome and painful one: she had expected for there to be trials for them to overcome, and she had seen his bad luck even in just the short time they'd all been together, pummeled to the brink in a few short hours before sent out to do it again.

She rushed to his side, fingers hovered over his shoulder and rising to the space where his face was, although she did not touch him.

"What on earth did you find back there? Come on, you should sit, you need a healer. Do you need to lean on me again?" It was so easy to offer something once it had been accepted prior - her reservations shunted to the side in place of her compassion. No one could have gotten themselves so battered in a group like this except by virtue of cooperation.

Her eyes creased, and she forced herself to return his smile. "I now see what you meant," she admitted, quietly - her eyes flicked to the stages, now being cleared and cleaned and prepared for whatever came next. "About how degrading it feels. Perhaps if it were merely the one bout, it might have been different, but this just feels so..."

A shake of her head, hair swishing in time with the sashes and bobbles. "The spectacle feels so disconnected from reality, but somehow also hits too close to home."

(continued from here) @fangedjustice

He was practically buzzing as she approached, and she understood that he had sensed her coming a mile off – or perhaps, rather, that he was so tightly wound that he could have noticed a pin drop from across the ballroom. A consequence of his alert nature, surely, of his background and the less-than-ideal circumstances they find themselves in, being so watched as though in an exhibit by their otherworldy captors.

(She wasn't naïve. She understood that the outstanding tension between them was surely to blame in part, and she dismissed the thought that perhaps this had been a bad idea. She steeled herself against the jitter in her own limbs as they moved from the close, stifling air of the ballroom to the crisp winter night.

The bandage must come off, the wound must not be allowed to fester in the darkness. Expose it to the light, assess the damage, heal.

She resisted the urge to rub at the scar tissue, pushed back the dizzy memory of that dark, fetid cabin, of the recovery she had gone through with the healers, the heady nights of fever as the last infectious traces of whatever horrid magicks had cast their pall on them seeped from her.)

Igrene flicked an assessing glance over him as they walked – thanks to all saints, his wounds seemed as well healed as hers, though she certainly couldn't account for whatever clawed inside his heart. She shivered at the memory of the echoing despair, gooseflesh in concert with the cold night air. He had certainly borne the brunt of that, hadn't he?

They didn't make small talk as they made their way from ballroom to the offered gardens - was it that neither were inclined to it, or was the weight of awkwardness so oppressive? It was hard to tell, and Igrene was ill used to it. She had never so restrained what was on her mind, had never had a use for such a level of toeing around the subject - but neither could she have been accused of being cruel, or of misunderstanding.

The garden was indeed lovely, though it had a vicious sort of charm to it. It was not what was expected, certainly, with large tropical pitcher plants, great leafy flower trees growing wild and overhanging the paths.

She had never seen anything like this in her life, she thought, but what she said was, "I did not expect you to have the habit of being so unforgiving, Sir Lloyd. Even if it is to yourself."

She did not turn to face him wholly - allowed him the grace to react while not under direct scrutiny - but from the corner of her eye she regarded his movements.

She continued, coming to stand in front of a frangipani tree larger than any tree she had ever seen, a hand reaching up to brush her fingers against the fragrant blooms, "We were warned, going into the forest, what to expect - that creatures were behaving irrational to their nature, and that there would be violence."