(Untitled)

[white_flowers]

A dim, distantly-heard echo of unreal discordant chimes floats faintly on the air, but there is no sound of wings as the snowy owl bursts from a strangely grayish-white cloud and soars over the deep forest toward Milliways. Circling, she glides down to a perch on a tree-branch by the lake. Golden eyes are focused on the bar and its environs

Comments

[creator_raven]

At the table where he sits, playing games with Derry, Raven grows still.

Will the veiled sister between the slender
Yew trees pray for those who offend her
and are terrified and cannot surrender

Very still.

After a moment he looks up, eyes wide and black and so very tired.

Derry cranes her head around, looking at Raven, face scrunching up in what might be either a scowl or the beginnings of a wail.

Raven catches her movement but stays looking at Blodwen for another long moment, not breathing.
Here we are.
Then he closes his eyes, huffing out a very quick breath, and the animation returns to his face. Smiling, he looks down at Derry and tickles her very carefully.

She giggles, distracted for a moment by both his bright expression and the lines of green and yellow paint that he smears over her cheeks.

He laughs as well, the sound bright and warm and happy. But his eyes remain dark, and his head remains bent.
Speaking of good endings.
It might even be so that he can better watch Derry.

[white_flowers]

Perhaps it is just that reason that he tilts his head, so that he can care for a child not his own.

That is something it is that they have both done through their long existence, after all.

Ice-bright eyes meet his darkened ones, and her gaze holds his steadily.

Blodwen smiles.

[creator_raven]

Raven looks back, because he cannot do otherwise.

There are, perhaps, whole hosts of reasons for that.

One hand is still holding Derry, and the other helps her draw whorls of blue and green and gray on the page.

It is not entirely unlike the ocean, really--or a wide open plain on an overcast day.

He doesn't blink, and fire does not flicker in his eyes. Nor does light, truth be told.

And then he smiles in return, tilting his head just a little.

"Welcome back."

[white_flowers]

"Why, thank you, cariad," she says, smiling still. "Is it that you have missed me, then?"

[creator_raven]

Raven tilts his head a little farther.

"Perhaps, though I do not think it likely."

There is a very slight pause.

"It has not been so long since last we spoke, after all, yes?"

[white_flowers]

"Not so very long at all, pretty bird." She smiles at him, and then nods to the child that he holds.

"Such a dear little girl."

[creator_raven]

Derry giggles, splashing paint everywhere.

Raven's expression does not change.

"She is, I think, her mother's daughter, so."

[white_flowers]

"Is she yours as well, then?"

An odd lilting light emphasis might be evident.

"A lucky child, if so, some might think."

[creator_raven]

Derry makes a face, smearing blue and gold pain all over the leg of Raven's pants.

This seems to be her answer.

Raven merely shifts her over a bit, preventing her from gaining the ability to make multicolored footprints.

At least for the moment.

"I have no children."

He does not smile.

"And as for luck? You would, perhaps, know that far better than I."

[white_flowers]

"Why, prettty bird-- I have learned never to trust to luck."

All lilting humor is gone, replaced by deadly seriousness.

"Such things serve no purpose at all."

[creator_raven]

"That is not, I think, the only thing you have learned not to trust."

He laughs suddenly, brightly, one arm wrapping a little more securely around Derry.

She does not seem to appreciate this.

"And as to purposes, likely you know well enough what I think of those."

If she didn't already, the expression of amused disgust on his face tell the tale well enough.

[white_flowers]

"Better than you think, cariad."

Poison in her tone, the sweet slow poison of days wasted and time lost without hope of regaining.

"Still, lovely it is to see you again, oh my goodness yes. Such a chat we might have, when you are not busy with your little dear, there."

Blodwen smiles at him.

"Or even another visit."

[creator_raven]

"Perhaps."

Raven's grin at this moment is almost blinding.

"I still have a choice to make, after all."

He tilts his head, black eyes bright.

"Do I not?"

And then he scoops up both Derry and her storybook and heads for the stairs.

It is time for Derry, at least, to be asleep.