Seaside Moors Maybe I should get to church on Sunday...

The woman was appealing despite their differences; the offer, less so. Or maybe it was Stryx' training and indoctrination that got in the way. She did not think being confined to any singular place would satisfy her, and that would not have been fair to the coastal family. She would miss Raleska when she left - the children too, maybe.

It sounded as if they were doing well. 'It must be nice,' she thought, 'to have a big family, an invested family.' Rather than the discriminatory traditionalists she was born of, who rejected the scion so readily. No wonder she found her calling among the crones, come to think of it. She often felt too old and weathered by familial pressures and had escaped the only way she knew how — at great cost.

As to visits with the children, the offer was surprising, but Stryx let her stone-faced glance speak volumes. Perhaps when they are older. She offers as a compromise, hardly committing to anything. Too much can go wrong in the beginning.

Feeling there is nothing more to say or do, now that the crab has been buried and the conversation has stalled somewhat, Stryx plays at the soil as if she's investigating some of the dry grasses there; she overturns a chunk of salted earth further along, and without word slips away from Erzulie's side — mulling over many things in private.