the colours that i can't change

As Chakra voiced approval and appreciation for Jinx's flattery, she felt her lips pulled tight around her ferns. The appreciation humbled her in a way that she had never been humbled before. Nobody had appreciated her before. The wolves in Shearwater had thrown test after test at her sister and her, expecting them to buckle and fail, and watching with impressed eyes how the two rose to the occasion... But they had never appreciated the youths. Her family had never appreciated her, no more than they appreciated all the others. Bon Dye had never appreciated her.

Chakra appreciated her, or rather her words, and it was a welcome sensation. She returned the flattery, to be sure, which the Kesuk soaked up unabashed... But this was much the way Nanuq and Aktaie had been, once. Mutually respectful toward one another, when at long last the Nereides and Shearwater feud had ended. Perhaps this was what it was like to be in the presence of a goddess. "I am grateful for your offer, and for allowing me to gather these, Queen Feralheart," she said in a near-reverent whisper as they found their way back to the border. "I will be sure to do so. The Spider Queen shall be unopposed ruler of these woods."

There was little else to say, so with a spoken farewell hinging on worshipful, the Kesuk took her leave of Neverwinter... But in the back of her mind lingered the question of whether leaving was the right thing. Had she been capable of seeing into the future, perhaps she would have pledged herself to Chakra instead of Akhlut, but she saw no wrong yet in the leader of Horizon Ridge, and she was hard-pressed to leave the sea.