Firestone Hot Springs You're saying the words that I want you to say

The woman stared at her and Stryx could only stare back, bristling, waiting for her to see sense, as if that were possible. As if her words could abort those little lives in the span of seconds.

She did not know her views were so harmful nor so alien in this place; but she did recognize the look of panic in the other woman's face, the glossing of her eyes, the dribbling of tears to darken her pale cheeks. The woman stepped back and in that tenuous moment Stryx realized her mistake. Her ire had been misplaced—she didn't mean it, she—!

Down went Speedy. A twist of an ankle, enough destabilization for her rotund self that she plopped against the dirt, and sat there crying with what Stryx might decribed as an utterly crushed expression on her face.

Something clicked in Stryx's mind then. She knew she was in the wrong but could not face this woman or her tears. That round belly swollen with innocent lives, and the cluster that sat nearby of freshly plucked herbs that Speedy had been trying to gather—her work interrupted—and in the back of her mind those crones shouting rare praise in support.

Rather than apologize (as she felt she had nothing to apologize for) Stryx turned, and with a brisk trot, left the scene.