Ankyra Sound There are times that walk from you like some passing afternoon

Maybe if they had all been a bit more like Caiaphas, and a bit less like their father, things would be different. But Raleska was tired of thinking of how things could be different: none of it mattered in the face of reality, which was, truly, the only thing that mattered.

And nothing would change what had come to pass. Nothing would change her mother, dead -- and everything else.

She looked to the sand bitterly as Ephraim spoke, his words offering some small gleam of consolation amidst a pool of deep resentment. Not for him, nor for her mother -- but for herself. For being so .. traitorous to the family.

She realized she was now looking at her family from the same side Ephraim had, that day Rusalka had come to Drageda long ago. Looking at the gap from his vantage, she couldn't say she loved her view: all it did was harden the fact she had turned her back to her mother.. when merely a year ago, she had been her mother's most steadfast supporter.

What had changed?

Well, life had. Life had a peculiar way of doing that with or without the consent of those that lived within it. It was either adapt and change, or be lost to the shores of time. How her views had changed, her hopes, her needs -- all in some period as short as a fickle year.

She tried a threadbare smile, and it hung off of her lips limp and useless. Maybe Ephraim was right -- her mother had been sick inside all along. Maybe that was the reason she had met the end she had -- for if she hadn't been bent on revenge to the point of mental illness, would she have ever fallen ill at all?

"Maybe you're right." Raleska conceded at length, feeling a dogged exhaustion seep into her shoulders. Stealing a short glance back to the grotto, Raleska's eyes found Ephraim's with quiet dread: "what.. do we do now?"