Re: Dora and Addi
Dora's pale eyes held nothing but sympathy, and even more, a deep spark of empathy. "C'mere," she said, and she leaned forward, concentrating and not bothering to draw her wand, letting a glimmer of magic out to fix the worst of Addi's make up, a little tingle across her face and nothing more. She knew how it felt to have her make up in ruins, her armor of sorts stripped away, and she gave it back to the young woman without a word.
She sighed and shifted, settling her deep green skirts about her in a slightly more orderly puddle, her knee gently pressing against one of Addi's, a small point of connection. She fussed with the fabric, a sign to someone who knew her that she wasn't as calm as she appeared to be.
"I understand, really I do," she said, and her clear grey eyes showed she wasn't lying. She reached out and put her hand over Addi's. "Not just... in the way you think it. I really do. I... I don't think Apollo," she used the name because he wasn't in her good graces at the moment, "has told you much about me, really, has he?" Didn't surprise her, as she tended to be a very private person. "And I didn't tell it around, but ye deserve tae know that Ewan and I didn't plan ours either. I had my spells unknowingly stripped from me during a Healer's visit. So I didn't even think I could be pregnant, or any of that, either." Her voice was quiet, not easily overheard. She shrugged a bit, not comfortable with sharing, really, but knowing it would help. "And ye do know I was sick up until the day I gave birth. So I get it. It really sucks." The last, a word she rarely used, but her lips quirked faintly at it.
"Given my druthers, Addi, I'd have waited. I'd have had a long engagement. I wouldn't have had kids yet. Please don't think I don't love them, 'cause I do more than my life. But I wouldn't have... rushed into everything. And you shouldn't have to if you don't wish to, you know." As much as it would pain her brother... she couldn't take his side on this one. Not when she was Addi in so many ways, though her own physical abuse had been longer ago. "I had the same choice, and I made the same one you did." And there was the approval, quiet though it was, that Addi had been seeking.