10-23-2018, 10:48 AM
"Possibly." He says this in a doubtful tone that suggests probably not. She scowls at him a little, displeased by the suggestion in his low voice. A practical woman by nature, she doesn't often let herself get carried away in wonder. But when she does, she does not appreciate third-party skepticism.
"I don't know." The question surprises her. She had not considered the mortality of bugs before, but if she can be alive after all this time, aching for a lost world, why can't they? Even if they weren't alive to see that lost world, perhaps they can still feel it there in the shadows behind them. Change has a weight to it, sometimes.
"Possibly." the word is a teasing reflection of the way he had said it. She grins for a moment, but it is gone before she speaks again. "The trees, if anything." She thinks, sometimes, she can feel the way they ache for the past. How they reach deeper and deeper into the soil in search of something familiar.
She looks at Raed once more, instead of the lush night. There is nothing at all familiar about him. How has it come to be that she feels more in tune with the trees than the beasts of the world.
"I've been paying attention," she says this with a very subtle tone of mock indignation. Everything with her is subtle, until its not. The truth, and surely they both know this, is that she hasn't been paying attention at all. She's slept away the years and awoken in a strange land. Magic is not always wondrous, certainly not always kind.
Suddenly she changes the topic. "Have you lost anyone?" Are those ghosts she sees in his dark, gleaming eyes, or is it an unusual lack of them?
N O R T H