Arrow Lake and over seas to look upon her face

i got distracted halfway through writing this ...so if it stops making sense and turns into nonsensical word vomit, i apologize.

a small smile ghosts across blodreina's lips as aure mentions that praimfaya is a wanheda she would follow — and looking at her daughter, reina feels herself silently agreeing ...all the while knowing that she wasn't ready for praimfaya to grow up yet. it would be a long time until she was ready to lead ...and blodreina would do everything she could to prepare her for it but until then she also deigned to enjoy these moments while she had them.

she looks to aure then as the pale sylph recounts verx's disappearance — which has evidently continued, the news of which instigates a troubled set to the wanlida's brow. admittedly, she couldn't claim to know her uncle all that well but he hadn't seemed the type to run out to her. perhaps, she considers, she'd read him wrong. she hadn't thought wildfire was that type either ... and if she was being entirely honest with herself she hadn't ever thought she'd be the type to turn her back and yet here she was. a natrona all the same. regardless, it seemed unusual for verx to vanish without a word ...if for no one else than his children and there's a part of calculating wanlida that wonders if she's being told the whole truth. maybe she just wanted to believe better of her father's brother.

it's how drageda would've handled it. blodreina responds quietly. regardless, she can't say she disagrees with mahler's verdict. a man that turned his back on his own children, children he claimed to love was no man at all, in her mind. blodreina is quiet while she contemplates aure's words, ears fluttering back to rest at half mast atop her skull. i'd like to tell you that he'll come back ...but i don't know him well enough to confidently say that he will, and blodreina'd never been the type to offer false hope. but he has to live with what he's done and what he's missing in his children's lives while he's absent. maybe it'd be enough to haunt verx ...or maybe he'd already moved on.

blodreina sighs apologetically, wishing she had magical words of comfort to offer aure instead of bleak reality. it sounds like mahler is looking out for you, blodreina suggests with a small smile; but blodreina's no match-maker and does not condone suggesting that aure needed a man ( because she didn't ). it is a day for the three of us, we're friends aure and i'm here for you. she wanted aure to know that she was a sturdy shoulder to lean on or a listening ear if needed ...in a way that she hadn't been able to get thru to antumbra. heda'd internalized her suffering until it killed her — at least this is blodreina's assumption of that situation — and she didn't want to lose anyone else she considered kru like that.