Once, she had been beckoned to Tephra—hastily called to a place where the King lay wracked with fever and disease, suffering from the heavy hand of fate and the sacrifice she had made. She had been a different woman then, quiet and determined and shy. Always the calm river next to her sister’s raging ocean, the deep and undisturbed waters despite whatever turmoil raged within her breast.
She had made herself sick with her effort to heal Warrick.
It had been the catalyst to her own trauma, to the moment by the river.
But she does not feel such things now. She does not feel the fatigue any longer. It is such a distant thing that she can barely recognize it; she cannot even fathom the meaning of the word. She does not feel the sorrow or the fear or the confusion she felt when rising by the waters to the world come undone. She does not feel the worry over her own inadequacies as she pitted her healing against Carnage’s magic.
She feels little of anything, although there are constellations beginning to burn within her. Heavens that come undone—crooking a finger at her and drawing her forth down the path that unwinds slowly.
Perhaps this is just another step.
She walks toward him, her steps direct, her eyes burning golden—pupiless and ethereal where once there had been but hazel. When she is near, her wings rest crimson along her back, lovely face impassive. “It has been some time, Warrick.” Even this is different, her lovely voice the same and yet somehow an echo of itself, resounding in her throat on different vibrations. “I am glad to know you survived.”
She is, she thinks, although it is a more disconnected gladness than she might once have felt. There is no connection, nothing that makes her feel personally involved in the moment.
Still, she regards him kindly, if not distantly.
For a second, she angles her head toward the center of Tephra.
“Magnus is further inland, if you’d like for me to fetch him. I believe he is with his newest child.” There is a twinge at that, a ripple of emotion at the thought of Chronos and Larke, but it is flooded by the magic that runs through her veins and before she can even contemplate it, the power swallows it whole.
@[Warrick]