[center][h2][b]Ophelia[/b][/h2][/center]

"Could've been me. Just chance that Byrgenwerth found her first." Ophelia replied, lacking her usual animated musicality and instead being just... flat, dejected. She didn't break her gaze with the road, didn't adjust her pace, just... kept on as she'd kept on. For all the content that the words conveyed, she seemed strangely listless and unaffected by the whole thing as though dissociating from it... but to watch her walk and muse to herself it was clear to see that she was still herself and in control of her faculties. This was perhaps the first time any of them had seen her like this, though spells of depression had been increasingly common in the past few years as her body betrayed her and her circle of close friends grew ever smaller. She turned to gaze upon Farren and spared him only a blank look and a very wan smile indeed before she focused on the road ahead once more.

She'd snap out of it soon enough, she knew, as she always had. All things passed in the fullness of time... or when the demands of their new and dangerous world demanded it, she supposed. For this mercifully calm stretch of their journey there were no such burdens placed on her yet... though a part of her did remain tense and vigilant, and it was likely that part that Farren was observing in her. He was much the same, after all. She supposed that she didn't really begrudge him his past actions, not in the way that he might expect... he had his world, and it had shrunk to the point he'd done things that were desperate. That seemed to be the thread that connected everyone in Yharnam, those born here and those who came from afar--desperation clung to them all, sanguinary desires in a less-than-sanguine people soaking everything crimson ever since that damnable Blood Moon. She supposed they, the architects of that happening, were to blame more than anyone else--and that if any of them still lived, they had paid their prices... except Ego. Ego was their price to pay now, and she did think of Farren in a softer light when she considered that.

"But it wasn't you that made the choice, not really. They'd have found another if not you, stopped at nothing to get what they wanted. We're all just poppets, aren't we?"