[Millways] By the Lake

[cloakandclaw]

Much like the days when he first got to this place, he finds that the trees by the lake soothe him. It's a stubborn door that refuses to open, even under the threat of emergence by a planetary elemental: there's nothing he can do about it. No stranger to disappointment and to captivity, he knows he has little choice but to wait it out. If this is

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[joiningyousoon]

Maya's face is grave as she walks by the shore, her hands in her greatcoat pockets. The coat is long and dark, effective-enough camoflauge (to ordinary human eyes) against the night, though her hair and her face shine too brightly to be concealed under the light of moon and stars.

She pauses at the water's edge, glancing down -- and her eye is caught by something reflecting the light. She crouches down. It is a shard of glass, edges smoothed by long shifting under the surface of the lake. It's green; looks like it may have been part of a bottle. A remnant of some old lake party. Maya carefully digs it out of the sand and turns it over between gloved fingers.

After a moment's consideration, she sits on the sand.

[cloakandclaw]

"Maya Antares." She's the one with the name that sounds like a poem: he met her early on here. From his perch in the trees he nods; she may or may not be able to make that out, just as she may or may not remember him or their conversation.

It's a risk he's willing to take, and he only takes calculated risks these days unless he's in battle and then all bets are off. Standing on the bough, he leaps down lightly to the ground below, cloak trailing through the night sky behind him. When he's in the middle of a conversation, he prefers the balance of power to be even. It can't be if he's in the tree and she's seated on the ground. The inequity of it would drive him... a little madder than normal, and that's something he can't really afford.

The thread he hangs on by most days is already tenuous enough, and being stuck at this place again isn't doing anything to make that better.

[joiningyousoon]

Maya's head comes up, swift and sharp, at hearing her name spoken. It is not, perhaps, incredibly difficult to catch sight of the man in the tree, especially once he makes his move.

Vincent is, after all, rather memorable.

"Vincent Valentine," she says. She smiles up at him without rising, her weight resting back on her hands, and the piece of lake-glass resting in the sand beside her knee. It is a genuine smile, if small and quiet. "Care to join me?"

[cloakandclaw]

He does: his answer is in his movements and in a moment he's seated by her side, one leg stretched out, the other bent at the knee. The lake water is like glass tonight, like the shard she's got by her side. It's calming. When he shuts his eyes, he can almost imagine himself on the Junon ferry, heading towards Lucrecia again.

But inevitably his eyes open and he sees... the lake here instead of the ocean, and the odor of fresh rather than salt water. There is no western continent, no Mt. Nibel, no waterfall cave and... no Lucrecia.

In an unusual display of finesse, he glances at Maya and says something... almost normal.

"You're well, I hope?" It's a question he reserves only for those he actually likes.