Redhawk Caldera Fire away, fire away.

It took her by surprise, a little, when Eljay confessed to her. Towhee listened raptly, as if she hadn't already heard all this secondhand. "I'll talk to him next time I see him, feel out his side of the situation," she'd told Wraen. She'd sort of skipped a few steps there, though Eljay retraced them now, detailing his lovers' quarrel.

"It sounds like a communication breakdown," Towhee replied with a frown when he was through, "and bad timing." She paused before saying anything else, easing herself through another surge of anger. Had anyone escaped Niamh's and Reyes's blast zone unscathed?

The silence stretched for a few more beats before she broke it again to ask, "Nothing that can't be fixed. Look, I get it. I'm attached to this place too. But ground is just ground. If you want to be with Maia and she wants to be at the fen, then... why not? If you guys want to start a family, that's probably a better place to do it too," Towhee mentioned. "And, I mean, you can always visit. It's not like if you go with her, you can never come back again."

Do as I say, not as I do, she found herself thinking as she inevitably compared his relationship to her own. It was moot, considering the circumstances of Reyes's departure from the caldera, but if he'd left voluntarily, Towhee absolutely would've picked the caldera over him. Or maybe she only felt that way now, in hindsight. She recalled how whipped she'd been, with a clarity that now made her sick to her stomach. But she would swear up and down she hadn't been in love, which probably made all the difference in situations like these.