It’s with relief, a pounding heart, and a slowly-spreading smile that Evren receives Vita Nova’s warm greeting. Hearing her voice, seeing her smile and that light in her blue eyes - it’s been a long time, too long, but in that moment it’s as though no time has passed at all.
“Oh?” she asks, her head tilted in curiosity, when Vita explains that she is here to see Evren herself. She nods with understanding when Vita refers to the last time they had seen each other. “Of course,” she says, and feels the tickle of that memory - strange and otherworldly, painted in nightmarish shades of silver and black - prickling at the back of her mind, but she suppresses it. She doesn’t want to be anywhere else than here, in the present.
Her head dips slightly and her ears burn at the compliments Vita showers on her. “I could say the same of you. I mean, a Monarch Queen of Tinuvel?” she remarks, unaware of Warsaw’s recent fall from grace. Her lips curve up in a weak, sheepish smile. “It’s funny how things never quite turn out how you expect. Anyway, you must be tired and thirsty - let’s get you comfortable and then we can gab like the old maids we are.”
She leads Vita Nova through the forest, keeping to the well-worn trails where the bare autumn branches don’t claw quite so aggressively. Soft murmurings of the herd echo through the trees, but Evren keeps to their outskirts, winding past pine and elm and oak and hawthorn. “Not much further,” she promises, checking on Vita with a quick toss of her head over her shoulder.
Soon enough a gently-trickling stream comes into view, and Evren stops at its banks, waiting patiently for Vita to drink her fill. “So,” she finally says, once the silence has gone on too long and her heart has started to thump again. “How are things with you? Are you back on Tinuvel now? I saw you spending some time with your brother for a while back after… everything that happened.”
As soon as she’s said it, she internally cringes. She’s just admitted to having been aware of Vita’s presence next door in the Prairie. She can only hope that Vita doesn’t hold the fact that Evren had neglected to visit and make amends against her.
11; mutt; bay tobiano; 15.3hh |
