"It was," Maude answers with a solemn smile, her tone quite oppositely morose, and though tears threaten to bloom from her eyes, they instead only wetly shine for a moment, before she manages to carry on (for now) without falling into her overwhelming melancholy. She was, after all, an optimistic child, made of sunshine if ever there was such a girl; to dwell in the darkness, as she’d been forced to for this past half a year, was unnatural and painful, and for the green-eyed damsel, it was easier to pretend that the world she loved, and all the things she had loved within it, had not been destroyed by a jealous and angry God.
She is glad that her company is young and cheerful. It helps her keep her mood there, especially considering its tendencies to drop into the mournful range whenever she was alone for too long. Memories, Maude was learning, had a way of chasing you about, even if she’d rather not think about them, at least for a little while, until it didn’t hurt so much to remember.
It made getting along in a new world especially difficult, if one was crying all the time.
"I like it too, but I just got here, too. I’m looking about before I decide if I’ll stay here, because I don’t know if I want to yet," she answers, because, well, she doesn’t; though the people she has met in the realms of Dusk have been kind, so far, and she has found Evangeline, she also wonders what else is out there. The youth trusts fate as much as any young poet does, of course, so she is certainly going to give the place where she arrived first the most consideration, but what if beyond the rolling fields and towering cliffs of this place, there was a world even more inspiring to her? What if Helovia wasn’t actually gone, just waiting beyond some horizon somewhere, entirely intact? Perhaps it was a far fetched dream, she keeps telling herself, but if the God had lied to them once…
Giggling as Cress’ worried question draws her back out of her thoughts, the maiden smiles towards the jay, and playfully shrugs.
"If we need permission, they’re awful at enforcing it," the girl tells her of her own experiences, colorfully giggling or wincing when appropriate as she continues, "most everyone I’ve met so far has just arrived, too, except Damascus, but I was a bit of a, er, mess, and miss Eva was, well... Miss Eva. It’s possible that if he was supposed to demand our loyalty in the name of the Dusk empire, he forgot."
|
