Broken Antler Fen You're just like an angel

<3 This marks the last Toad post, ever T_T

Toad listened, but she felt like she knew better. Beautiful women were obvious. In the case of Wraen, she was a handsome and lovely woman with experience. Girls like Meerkat were gorgeous in their exotic colourations. Women like Hydra had the grandeur of status coupled with striking eyes, and a striking family name. Toad didn't have any of these things, and she knew it.

But Wraen spoke good points. The roles of heroes and heroines when she was young had indeed been filled by those she knew, though these characters were replaced with romanticized fantasies as she grew older. As the pair walked, Toad nearly stumbled over a rock frozen in the water beneath their feet. She recovered less than gracefully as Wraen continued. She was right again, that not everyone had interest in tall tales and legends and mythos. That wasn't the point, but Toad stayed silent, opening her mouth for a moment and then closing it half-heartedly. She didn't believe for a moment that Wraen didn't have what it took to be a mercenary, if that was what she wanted. Toad knew that training could make warriors. She refused to believe it at all. It was plausible that Wraen would never be the best of mercenaries, sure, but to give up on a dream because of her physicality? It seemed ridiculous.

But beauty was different, for it was in the eye of the beholder, and the beholder was a fucking strict judge. So Toad shook her head, and said nothing.

And Wraen went on, and she was right. Toad was content to be ugly, she thought, though she longed to be seen as not ugly. She was content to be strong, to be a hunter, to be useful. She was content to be the nanny for others when she could not find a partner or have children herself. She was content to be who she was, strong and independent and ugly, and forceful wherever she needed to be. Toad was content to stand for what she believed in, though she had never needed to do so with Hydra nor Osiris. She had found her place among boys, forever their wise huntress and never the mother she wanted to be.

All of this best friend business Wraen spoke of sounded like a pipe dream to Toad, for she had never met anyone who came close to something like that. She had many friends, and she loved them all. Her imagination had brought her a picture of a husband who fell deeply in love with her for no real reason at all, and asked her to marry him. But the reality was nothing like this. Wraen talked about friendship before marriage, a totally foreign concept to Toad. She talked about trying to gauge wants and interests and all of these things Toad had never thought about before, speaking to inexperience and a girlish fantasy that seemed farther than ever from real. The list that Toad had written mentally began to crumble, and she realized she had no idea what she was doing and in fact probably was too stupid to be happy or to find someone to love her fully and completely the way that Wraen described. Wraen knew better, and Toad looked down to the frozen floor for direction, and got nothing but her vague partial reflection in the ice.

She was incomplete. A story without an ending. Wraen said that she needed to find the person to complete her, but she had never felt incomplete. Just unsatisfied. She didn't think those were the same thing. She didn't know how to respond to Wraen, who seemed so wise and caring and thoughtful. I... thank you, she said wistfully. M... I... ah, it doesn't matter. And, really, it didn't. For Wraen knew better than to trust or care about the thoughts of feelings of a distanced cousin. I appreciate your candor, she answered, smiling softly, avoiding eye contact.

They continued on that way, but Toad never exchanged more than a polite response, shutting down after the ideas of Wraen made her realize that her entire approach had been incorrect. It was only later that she began to realize that it wasn't necessarily incorrect but just misdirected. For soon, she'd realize that there was hope on the horizon for her dull life. Soon, the sea would call her name.