Greatwater Lake wrapped them in "I don't owe you a damn thing"

If she perceived the dark shift in his attitude, she didn't show it. 

An itch to move took hold of her, the glacial nymph rising gracefully and padding to the line where the water met the earth. Her toes dug into the moist, gritty soil - flexing, soothing her nerves with the crunch of it between her pawpads. A single milky eye flickered back at him as he spoke, unreadable. 

She turned to half face the brindled brute, one paw still submerged and seemingly lost to the shallows in the low light - invisible plumes of substrate muddying the waters beneath the atramentous surface. For a moment, she merely studied him; then, as if making up her mind about something, she declared, "I like ye." A beaming grin broke over her solemn features, faintly untamed in nature. 

Perhaps she was insane - maybe she had been for a while. If it weren't so, why did she keep finding herself in situations like these, with men like the chieftain of the Saints? 

Or maybe it was some quality about her that failed to draw any men save for the villainous sort - the air of tarnished innocence about her, luring them like vultures to a kill. 

The question of her insanity has long been in the air; and she doesn't yet know him well enough to say whether her inner musings were true. 

"Even though ye zink I'm soft," there was no offense taken, no malice to this additive. Only a teasing glint in her eyes and a softening of her features, which made her smile seem wan and vaguely bemused. 

He was wrong. 

Any slave of the north would've scoffed at his inner stupification. War was their life, her life. Everyday was a battle to keep breathing, a battle she'd fought since drawing her first forsaken lungful of air - a battle she won each day she rose to face the world again. 

He was scary, aye, but only because she had met and married men of his ilk - darker even. Her grace, her softness was not weakness. Her gentle nature was her strength, her spite - and everyday they could not take it from her was another day she spit it in their face. 

Did what you would; maimed me, tortured me, murdered me. But you could not kill me in a hundred winters. 

Perhaps if he knew..but, no. No one knew - save for Reiko - and she intended to keep it that way. 

Her gaze returned, gratefully, to the stars, glad to put the topic to rest. The Azura seemed unnerved by her curious interrogation, but it was not him she was trying to hold accountable. Posing such queries to Donovan was the closest she could get to closure, to determining exactly why Aliroth had chosen her to ruin. But he wasn't willing to give it and she wasn't willing to press. 

"I feel ze same vay. Ze druids do nae 'ave many beliefs about ze stars but..I 'ave always felt a connection to zem. It 'as always amazed me zat people come up vith zese religions an' yet never turn to ze 'eavens fer vorship." The milkmother philosophized aloud, a faint and fond smile upon her lips as her moonlight eyes scanned the nightsky. 

"Vhen I zink of where zis vorld must 'ave come from, an' everyzing in it, I believe it must 'ave been from out zere." Just as the words have finished falling from her lips, her gaze locked upon the white tail of light streaking across the sky. 

A gasp tumbled from her and she glanced to Donovan with wide eyes, lips parted in an 'o' of surprise. Practically bounding up to his side, she perched next to him again as her excited chatter filled the air. 

"Did'ja see? Zat means ye 'ave to make a vish," her tone has dropped to a whisper by the end, informing him just in case he hasn't heard the superstition (she'd seen a comet but once, though the druids believed that it was an omen of change to come). 

Without waiting to see if he followed her example, her eyes shut tightly and her forehead wrinkled in concentration as she intently focused upon what she would wish for.