Firefly Glen [PHE] pour me a drink

Akavir would find his daughter hovering possessively over a varicolor pile of stones kept tucked in an old threadbare rabbit skin she'd carried all the way from Swiftcurrent Creek. None of them had kept their sheen in absence of water, but the colors were nonetheless vivid: ruddy and mauve tones, mostly, like berries. But some were a deeper blue, or brighter, or mossy-green; some were speckled or only colored in patches. Mae planned, at some point, to pass the riverworn gemstones to Akavir's care — but until then she wanted to be sure they weren't stolen or lost.

His greeting caught her off-guard. Arric's affectionate nature was as much a fact of Mae's life as the sunrise each morning and her own lost vision; a cornerstone of the meager emotional foundation of her childhood. She was used to that.

To hear it so unexpectedly from Akavir was — odd. It touched on a place so remote and fragile in her heart that it nearly hurt, and the feeling was vaguely familiar to her in the way of something half-forgotten. She swallowed, abruptly nauseated and unsure. As careful as she was to guard her expression, some of the raw, bittersweet wonder of the moment still shone through in her eyes as she turned to face her father.

It felt... nice. She wanted to cry.

Instead she blinked to brush the clinging crumbs of feeling from her expression and grinned. Mingle? Like, with people? For a moment Mae feigned shock, then fell into a more suspicious line of questioning: Or are you gonna ditch me the second some random bitch bats her eyes at you?