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More and more, it seems as if you've lived your life on a placid island of blindness and ignorance amidst a roiling sea of chaos. It's not as if this is all new, this blood and terror, it's just that you were never aware of it. While you lived your peaceful life, there was a rot festering beneath the surface. Now that you've experienced it, it's impossible to return to your prior innocence.
These thoughts pass through your mind as you watch the group of sleepy looking men and women lining up for the last evening train. Most of them, the vast majority of them, will live and die without seeing even a tiny fraction of the things you've seen.
Good for them.
“Hey, are you listening?” Elle asks, reaching across and poking you in the arm.
“Of course I was listening,” you lie, shaking off your dark thoughts.
“Oh really? Then what was I saying?”
You look around to Ariel for support, but she gives you a look of perfect blank neutrality. With a silent inward sigh, you look back to Elle. “You were asking about our next move,” you offer, “About our next visit to the Demesne.”
Elle is silent for a moment. “You're just guessing,” she says at last.
“He was right though,” Ariel points out.
“Well, yes, but... anyway,” Elle shakes her head, giving you a soft smile that hints at both exasperation and amusement, “I was going to say, we shouldn't rush into anything. I know you're eager to catch up with Gratia, but we should be careful. I think...”
She lapses into silence here. You wait, but the thought remains unspoken.
-
“Did my father ever tell you anything about my mother?” you ask bluntly, sitting down opposite Alex. It's still early, early enough that the others are still asleep and Alex is still eating breakfast. He looks up with an expression like a startled deer, the question catching him entirely off guard. He swallows heavily and washes his mouth out with a gulp of tea, the motions buying him precious time to think.
“What brought this on?” he asks at last.
“Doesn't matter,” you reply swiftly, “Did he?”
“...No,” Alex says, shaking his head, “I asked, once or twice, but it was always the same. He'd just ignored the question. If I pressed the issue, he'd fly into a rage. After that, I stopped asking.”
“You weren't... curious?”
“Of course I was!” Alex insists, “But lad, you know what your father was like. There was no way of talking him around. I tried to make some enquiries, see if anyone else had any idea, but that was a dead end too. All I had were theories. I thought, maybe it was embarrassing for him – an affair with some servant girl – but that never felt right. I just couldn't bring myself to believe it. So I wondered if your mother might have been someone of poor character, perhaps even a Tomoe. But... I never found an answer that I could accept.”
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