Moonspear hopes and dreams, they will collide

She surprised him and not in the way that he had anticipated.

He had wanted her to simply acquiesce, to have her worries soothed and to back off of wondering after him. Instead he found her withering away with an apology that first came through on self-realization and more queries hot in their trail. A part of him balked at the display; this was a far fairer creature to be found and in that gentle wonder he found he did not know how to handle her, or her guilt.

His gaze had wandered back to her in that brief moment, but he soon pulled it away thoughtlessly; it was uncontrolled, perhaps cold not to want to lay eyes on her when she was very much incline to receive him. It should not have been that easy to tear through a perceived wall, and worse to feel as though he had laid siege.

"She's alive," he answered blandly—what a struggle it was to find words. "A little worse for wear but I suspect we all are... and I didn't really ask much more than that. We were both looking for a herd to influence about, both had things to attend to." Half in truth and half in a lie; Nyx had told him more than that, of where she had gone and what she had seen, and Dirge hadn't the time to begin to process it.

Much in the same way he hadn't entirely processed the gentler side of Hydra he was witnessing. She had saved it for the children, at least when they had been far too young to speak their emotions and give voice to their complaints. Yet he wasn't about to refund it; Dirge would hold onto it as long as he could. He would do the same of her proposition of the summer as well.

"I suppose I could go see her directly," he went on, but the silence that followed it was lengthy. He could, thought even he should have, but could not put the thought aloud beyond its present state. To do so would make it seem writ in stone and thus an obligation he discovered he did not want. "She did seem content and that's all that matters. That's all that has to matter." His disappointment was contrived to a degree and better left that way; he had not told her of all that had changed in his world.