Meadow

"That sounds lonely," she said, with a soft neutrality that spoke more of camaraderie than pity, but he found himself realizing that even if it had been pity, even if it had been condescension, he would've been relieved to have it. When was the last time someone had pitied him, let alone soothed his wounds genuinely..? He stared down at her burnished golden figure silently, but his mind went to a soft black shape, who rarely spoke in those dark, serious moments, but leaned quietly against him with considerable weight, as if the bulk and pressure could crowd his troubles from his body. He was certainly lonely, but it was a long, slow death of familiarity- the agonizingly slow coming to terms with the knowledge that he could never have back all that he'd had. Betrayal had been swift and brutal, but loneliness was bewilderingly sluggish: a stealthy new poison of awareness of his own insignificance and solitude every morning, fresh and awful and increasingly familiar, all at the same time. He found he didn't have words to acknowledge it to her- and he didn't think he needed to. She, he thought, knew.

"Did you come because of them?" He was a little startled by this- surely it was obvious, surely she was asking just to fill the silence- but as his mouth stuttered over the words, his mind fumbled at the wording. Because of them. Or because of it? It was the kind of question Echion would slide calmly across the table, with all its possible meanings, and the real desire was never the obvious answer but what you thought the obvious answer was. It had driven Orestes crazy with exasperation back then. Now, hearing it mirrored from Róisín's gentle, careful pink mouth, it filled him with unease and, maybe more horribly, a wave of nostalgia strong enough to make him seasick. Gritting his teeth until he wondered if she could hear them grinding, he forced out a short, "Yes," and turned his head away. Maybe he looked like a sulking child to her, this golden force so much smaller and younger than he, but if it kept those celestial eyes from weighing him, it was a blow to his ego he could bear.

Fortunately, at least for the moment, she let him get away with it- or maybe it was more than that. After all, she, he thought, knew. "Me, myself, and I," she joked, a little thinly, confirming his suspicions, and after a small hesitation (maybe he was a child, he thought with exasperation), he turned back to her, treading along at his elbow with strides he had to shorten his own to match. He almost reached down to her, but the white of her face was a marble mask, tilted away from him and untouchably placid, with none of his pathetic invitation for pity, and he shrank back again, straightening up with a little shake. That 'originally' sat so heavily in her mouth that it was a physical effort not to reach out and take it from her to inspect.

Her tail snapped against her with the hushed whistle-crack of violence, and he didn't quite twitch at the sound, though his ear flicked and his big feet shifted restlessly. The peak..? No, the Peak- a place. Part of this place, if he had to hazard a guess. Rolling his shoulders as Echion often teasingly accused him of doing when he was bracing himself to be ignorant, he glanced sideways to see her watching him, and tried not to flush.

"No, I've... Not left this island." A rather generous appraisal- he'd barely left the beach since coming here, but his pride couldn't quite admit how he'd let himself languish in indecision and self-pity since then. "You mentioned sisters- do you have many?" She'd slipped mention of them in so casually it had barely registered at first. It felt strange, to think that she'd spoken of her uncle with such care, as if the space he filled in her were so fragile, and yet these sisters seemed almost an afterthought. He tried very hard to keep his voice neutral as he asked, "Do you... Not get along?"