Duck Lake I never listen, but I see it with my eyes closed

If you have time! Set sometime just after @Akavir leaves the Blossom thread

Mae had trailed Blossom all the way from the willows, equal parts concerned and curious at her departure. Along the way she'd run across Reverie's scent, though — and that had made her hesitate. They still hadn't spoken since their last argument. Since Mae had said such terrible things to her.

She made it as far as the lake before she decided to turn back. A single glimpse of the pair in the distance was all it had taken. Mae wasn't yet ready to face Reverie again; she wasn't sure she ever would be. So instead she turned back, thinking she might seek Boone if he wasn't too angry with her. Maybe she could ask him how she might go about apologizing. Mae couldn't even remember the last time she'd apologized to anyone at all before Reverie.

He had skirted around Reverie and her daughter—any other time he would have been grateful at the reprieve from having to spark forced and polite conversation, particularly when bad blood remained between them—but his focus was elsewhere.

Mae.

She had howled her departure one autumn day—the memory of it lancing through the man. At the time, he had assumed to give her space—any time he had tried to talk with her, anger had emanated from her. If he had said the sky was blue, she would insist it was green, it had seemed.

Oil and vinegar.

He had hoped it was a bout of teenage angst—that in a months time, she would be home… where she could be safe.

But no, the monster she ran from was him… not the rowdy gang of rogues that plagued lands, the witches of the marsh, or the soldiers who stole young girls and traded them to Pharaoah’s as pleasure servants...

Him.

And time passed, and she did not return.

They said if you loved something, you set it free.

So when he saw her—that stark, wiry ebony figure in the distance, it felt as if his heart stopped. He might as well had been looking to a ghost, like the apparition and his fevered dream of Ibis.

Scars adorned her. They cloaked her—each a notch of his failure as a father. And while he managed to croak one word: “Mae…” he found himself silenced beneath the weight of his grief, then.

Her anxiety regarding Hearthwood's Coach had blinded her, for a time, to her proximity to Swiftcurrent Creek. That reality swiftly came crashing down on her in the form of a familiar voice.

Her father. Here. Calling her name. Mae froze, eyes finding him immediately. Her ears went flat and she tensed, but even so she couldn't help but see all the ways that he too had changed during her time away. He seemed... tired. Weakened, somehow. Her heart ached.

Akavir, She greeted coolly, betraying none of the hurt and longing which washed over her in this moment. Perhaps cruelly, she wondered if Eshe had left him. Why else would he seek her out now? Mae hesitated a moment, then finally added in a tone that might have been warmer by a few degrees, You look like shit.

Her reaction to him was visceral to him. Hatred seemed to emanate from her—the same hatred he had received from her for months now.

She was scarred, and battered. But she was alive… and he hoped she was well.

A cold greeting—and perhaps a gleeful observation on her part at his ragged appearance. A wane smile broke upon his lips—but did not meet his eyes. “Aye,” he agreed, but left it at that—what else was there to say?

“How are you doing?”

He looked to her now. Trying to pinpoint the moment her love for him had turned to absolute hatred.

Ah, there it was. The anger. She'd been waiting for that, waiting for the white-hot surge of bitterness always trailing the red lash of hurt. A metallic taste filled her mouth. How are you doing? Four words against a childhood of neglect. Four words against all the times she'd asked Arric when her father was coming home, all the times she'd asked and asked until she realized one day that he had no answer for her. She'd stopped asking after that.

Four words against the night of Moss's death when she'd cried in her uncle's arms instead of her father's, the day she'd limped across the borders in tatters and was tended by Eshe, the day she stumbled dying through the mountains and was saved by Blossom when it should have been Akavir. It should have been him, all of it. But he was never there.

And now he wanted to know how she was doing.

The anger burned bright and burned out in the same instant. Suddenly Mae felt very tired.

Since when do you care? She heard herself saying, but it felt hollow; drained of emotion. I'm doing real shitty. I have been for a long time. Maybe you would know that if you were ever around.

There it was—it burned brightly in her eyes, at first—and then from her tongue.

It wasn’t that he was impassive at the vehemence of her words, but as it had been since the beginning of this era, he knew he would be damned if he said anything to her, or if he did not.

He withheld the weary sigh that wished to cross his lips—the vitriol of her words and knowing nothing could bridge this gap between them. The accusation that he was never around certainly felt like a double edged sword—

— to know the weeks he held her and her brothers in Kvarsheim, ensuring they nursed when Jakoul disappeared from their lives. To know that the times he had to be away—such as the time a terrified Reverie insisted a witch hunted for her, and he tried to turn the tables to keep his pack and children safe—were remembered over every other night that he was within the den with them… and when they were older, the way he slept just outside it.

When had he truly been gone? To Akashingo, for over a week, perhaps? Was that her memory of her childhood she fixated upon?

If he approached her, he was overbearing. If he kept his distance, he was neglectful.

“Ditto,” he wanted to return—but that wasn’t fair. He was supposed to be the adult in this situation—not the moody teenager.

“I’ve always cared, @Mae.” She could believe it, or she could not—he might not have been able to be there physically at all times, but everything he had done had been for his kids, his pack, or the alliances he had promised. Of that, he felt was his truth.

Mae wanted to believe him. She did. I've always cared; was that not what she'd wanted all along? Yet she felt no better hearing the words. That same sense of fatigue crept further into her bones, and she could only think of all the times she had needed him and he had not been there.

You could try showing it sometime, She grumbled after a moment, eyes dropping as she continued. I live in the mountains now. Place called Hearthwood, big ass willow forest near the sea. I'm not always there. But uh... you could visit. If you want. Her eyes found him again, searching this time. It wouldn't fix everything. But it would be a start. And maybe one day she could come back home.

For now, Mae didn't dare let herself hope too much.

She wanted him to show it sometime—but he felt this rhetorical, at least, for now. What he hadn’t expected was the olive branch that was extended—an invitation to visit her in her new home. A willow forest… on the mountains, closer to the ocean.

Reverie’s home.

He didn’t revel in the thought of coming across the golden woman again, but it wouldn’t stop him from fully accepting this potential moment between him and his daughter. “I’d really like that, Mae,” he offered—it was stiff between them now—but he wanted very much to bridge that gap between them. “I need to get my permission slip signed by Arric, first,” he offered, a rueful smirk pulling at the corner of his lips. “But I’ll try to come out before the winter fully melts away.”