Meira
maybe then
I'd feel alive without you
T
he crowd that gathers in the streets provides no relief for her as she hovers at the gates. It is not until a familiar voice calls out for the crowd to dissipate that she realizes just how many bodies were nearby. It is not the creature she wants to see. Meira doesn't want to talk to her Sovereign right now, she doesn't want anyone. She doesn't need anyone. Yet, the deer swiftly organizes the onlookers and ushers them to depart. It is a kindness that the soldier doesn't believe she deserves as she stares after the flanks of the vanishing crowd. Then it is only her and Callynite. Meira pries her stare from the bodice of the deer as she begins to speak, addressing her by name. There is no desperation in her voice as she speaks, she is not determined to force Mira to stay.The striped child of the sea continues to stare out at the meadow that separates Delumine from the rest of Novus. From the wilds in which all of those she thought she would care about vanished into. Meira listens to Callynite as she speaks, encouraging her to share what has disturbed her so. There is a biter laugh that spills forth from her lips and her head swivels in an almost predatory fashion as she peers at Callynite once again. It is an abrupt, and violent movement. It is not directed at Callynite, not yet. She will not commit such a heinous act and get herself thrown out of this court yet. There is no reason for the hate she feels that seeps out of her. Meira does not acknowledge the kindness that Callynite continues to impress upon her, but she does not trust it. She cannot.
Everything is too close and too covered in thorns for her to find comfort. "It is not you, or what you represent that has me so disturbed. Delumine has changed hands more times than I'd care to admit. One after another, my expectations were to remain loyal and protect our Sovereign even if they are different from one week to the next. I thought that the family before Andras would be different. I thought I cared about them, and that it was mutual. I was wrong about them. Imagine promising your fealty and protection to an idea rather than an individual. It's unstable, and I do not need anything more that is unstable in my life, as selfish as that is to say." Meira begins, and the bitter tones do not pull back their roots. Instead, they burrow deeper into her heart.
"Even more so, imagine that you have uprooted your entire life in the hopes you might be accepted into a new home to find that you have almost nothing in common with the majority of the community. Delumine loves scholars, but it does not love the soldiers in the same way. The ones built for war are forgotten in favor of those who can read ancient tomes. They're all nice, but Oriens will never love me the same way. I am and always will be an outsider here. I have not done much in the way of building my life because I spend far too much time running from an outside threat." Meira explains she is unable to stop herself from unleashing all these pent-up feelings on the first creature to ask what has bothered her.
"Would you stay if your court did not love you so? If you found you could not relate to anyone? Where would you go if you felt that no place in all Novus could feel like home anymore? Do you stay and fight to make a place for yourself, or do you leave?" Her words almost sounded like a challenge, but beneath that challenge was someone who desperately wanted a friend. Meira would never admit such things out loud. She never was the type to rely on others, and even less after Sebastien pulled the figurative noose taut against her throat.
@Callynite
