Re: Wandering: Hannah/Fiach
She knew a lot about not wanting to drag people into tempests. Too, she knew about people not wanting to be dragged there. Most people didn't want the ugly truths, or maybe they just couldn't handle them. She'd encountered that so, so much since coming here, that people only wanted the good things, and it wasn't something exclusive to Repose. Home had been like that too, and no one wanted the bad things then, either, and it was hard when your reality wasn't something that you could drag out into the light.
But she was good at that too, at leaving things in shadows, and she smiled at him, and she curtsied, and she left the rest behind for a moment. "I don't think pleasant talk needs to happen for a meeting to be pleasant," she told him. "Sometimes, it's nice to just be able to talk about real things," she said, "and to not have to pretend things you don't really feel." Maybe it was too much for a first meeting, but she was tired, and the words came.
The tuck of hair was unexpected, and she froze a moment before relaxing again. She was accustomed to men and their hands, but she just hadn't been expecting here. But calm and still, and he was assuring her that she was not alone in her despair about belonging. "You're right," she said after that tap of nose and a crinkle of nosetip to go along with it, "about moments. But I wish there were more moments and less death and gone and missing and not belonging," she told him, because she did wish these things, even as she knew the world was not likely to provide her the things she wished.
He stepped back and looked up, and she tipped her head, ear to shoulder, and regarded him a moment in quiet and lull. He was right that moments weren't something that could be taken, but she also knew that sometimes they were blocked, and sometimes the world knocked you down so many times that you didn't even have the energy to stand and have moments at all. "I hope we both continue to have moments," she told him.