Ankyra Sound Any rain softly kisses us on the face

Ephraim hadn’t been allowed into war, same as she, and she offers him a bit of a smile. She’d volunteered foolishly for the war but Antumbra hadn’t put her anywhere she really could have gotten in trouble. Sure, the enemy could have slipped from the territory where she and Artaax had been standing but they hadn’t and she’s thankful for it. She was a bit older than he when she went with them to the caldera and she’d only asked to go because Blixen had.

“Um, well… Eske found me last summer and brought me here. But I left for a little while in the spring and I came back a little while ago, before Heda came back,” she says and shifts her weight. Her avoidance of the leadership makes things a little weird, whether or not it was okay in the grand scheme of things. Blixen will fight for her, won’t she? “It was complicated but, I’m loyal too,” she adds though she feels a little weird for saying it, that she has to prove it to the others. Ephraim has to work just as hard too but he hadn’t left them entirely for a while like she had and so her smile turns a bit awkward.