Ravensblood Forest we have both lived with lips more scar tissue than skin

Damned if she did, damned if she didn’t; Aure raised her chin to better look into his face, argent eyes steeling, inscrutable but never reproachful, “I challenged Stigmata, for I didn’t believe in his views,” then, before any interjection, ”Their numbers had dwindled, and he was most certainly setting out to recruit drive — rather than it be a subordinate. Tell me, with ze Kapitën so absent, too, would Diaspora have remained as secure with only subordinates to guard it?” The lessening in numbers, a dastrous djinn on a rampage...

Sure, she’d been Pionier there; or, more specifically, simply woken up one morning and had an outrageous burden upon her shoulders before she even yawned. ...Aurëwen hadn’t earned it, though, and she hadn’t earned the Diaspora’s respects; she had no voice against their creed, no say in who should be on recruitment drives, no matter how much they’d lauded that she had.

“I understood that there was more danger putting our children out into ze world as I did, with that bastardi on ze loose. But I did what I thought was right for them — challenged him, because I did not take too kindly to a tyrant’s beliefs, of treating our children’s futures as if he owned them. I did not take too kindly to ze like beliefs of those others; who made it abundantly clear that if someone did not agree, then they were to leave. I challenged him, I lost, we left, and I’ve learnt of what I could have done before it.”

She’d kept that inside her, and alongside that meeting, it had festered with the feelings of growing contempt — until it came out as an unsolicited challenge against Stigmata. Not even to take his place ...but to show them physically  (as they desired)  that she wouldn’t stand for such lording over their persons; such onerous thoughts of no consideration or hope for alternative.

”But I do not regret my choice ...only that I didn’t consider our children’s words beforehand. Any longer, though, and they would have flourished in his ludicrous visions, and I would not stand for it. ...But perhaps I should have stayed. Perhaps I should have included ze children on it. Perhaps...” She sighed, soft and slow, and drew back, gaze flickering over his face before she paused; returned with more moss, slurring a “Keep still,” through it before she gently daubed at the crusting of his watery eyes, his dried nose. Dragostea... 

“You really think our children were going to live there and be safe there?” Her voice was lilting, wondering, unassuming, despite her heavily biased views of that strand; despite feeling that she’d continue to bring more danger to them. Through her actions, and that of her desecrator. “You did try, and you did hope, I know, and... Verx...”

She didn’t quite know what to do with that feeling.
No, scratch that: Aurëwen had absolutely no idea what she was feeling, or what she should be feeling; couldn’t focus on that myriad just yet. 

But she drew from Verx all the same, studying him with a quiet gaze, before resuming to clean the remainder of his wounds presented to her. “I... I just know amends will be made, comoara. I don’t know when, or how, but... I’ve humbled from what I did wrong of things that I thought were right.” A wisp of a sigh finished that wondering sentence, ruffling the furs upon his ribs.