The pair had barely known each other when they first met, hardly exchanged words before some needy understanding passed between them and words were no longer needed. Galadriel almost smiles at the thought, eyes tilting upward with subtle wrinkles; but no pretty gleam of her teeth flashes across her mouth, no. She is not a gentle creature. She never was and is even less so now.
“Yes,” Rel answers simply, blinking curious violet eyes at the handsome snake. A smile glimmers now—not a pretty thing, no. One quiet and amused and perhaps—perhaps calculating. She wonders what Riptide knows but doesn’t ask, not yet. “You’re in Taiga, too,” she murmurs, that simmering humor coloring her voice. There is little guilt when she stares at him. She desperately wishes there was.
Rel casts a wayward gaze at the towering pines and redwoods. She sighs, breathing out so heavily there’s hardly any air left in her lungs to speak what comes tumbling out:
“Did you know?”
When the question comes out, her voice is demure, muted. Perhaps she does feel guilt. Perhaps she instinctively tried to hide it with amusement. The guilt swells up her throat again, souring the meal in her stomach. She frowns, brow furrowing and eyes burning with dimly lit embers.
“That we have a daughter.”
A stupid question, really. She didn’t seek him out once she found out she was pregnant; and why would he keep tabs on a whirlwind encounter? Rel feels that ache, the stillness of something that never was and will never be meant to be.
Rel realizes she has ignored Riptide’s question, but she doesn’t offer an answer to it—instead zeroing an intense gaze on his.
“Her name is Frey. I haven’t seen her since two days after she was born.”
@Riptide