Seaside Moors Momma's in the beauty parlor, Daddy's in the baseball pool.

oh my god im so sorry for her

Why. Was. He. So. Goddamned. Rational? Why couldn't he spit in her face or insult her, so he could make it easy? Why couldn't he act like an arrogant asshole so Raleska didn't feel a single ounce of guilt when she ripped into him?

The tides of her confidence were again retreating, buckling under Wintersbane's continued unruffled demeanor -- right up until the whole fought like men comment. Raleska didn't bother hiding the roll of her eyes in response.

Ah, but now the tides were turning again as a little bit of the fire Raleska hoped to see in Wintersbane simmered and roared to life. Yes, speak down to her -- yes, tell her how it has to be -- poor little stupid Raleska, bogged down by her womanly brain. Thank god Wintersbane was here to see them all to salvation, these poor little lost wimmenfolk.

Her fur bristled. "You don't understand." Raleska's teeth gritted. "We don't want to recruit. We don't want fair -- whatever that misguided notion is. There's no such thing as fair. There is only what is, and what that is, is that a total outsider has come into our quiet lives and turned it upside down, all because of what he wants!" An edging in her voice of sea-glass and bitterness: "You didn't stop to think once about what we want, did you? About how we've shaped our lives, away from it all -- away from people like you. You're the trouble brewing. You're the storm on the horizon we've been watching. And the funny thing about men like you, is that they come and they go. Raleska's bitter laugh filled the air as she thought of all the men like Wintersbane that had come and went. Rosencrantz. Vercingetorix. Firefly. How funny it was every one of them had this egotistical notion that Rusalka was something to be fixed! How funny it was that if they were not dead (and many of them were), they were somewhere else. Not here. Not where it mattered. " You'll be nothing but a memory in two months time, and we will keep on as we've been keeping on. Rusalka will prevail, but you will be dust on the wind -- another stranger passing through who gets broken by the storm."