[center][img]https://i.ibb.co/ssxt53R/Thalia-Evercrest.png[/img][/center][hr][right][sub]Location: Outside Eye of the Beholder
Interactions: Nyla ([@The Muse])
Mentions: Tia ([@c3p-0h])[/sub][/right][hr]
[indent]Thalia’s lips parted, not for the cookie, but a breath that carried the weight of restraint. Not all truths needed to be spoken aloud to land where they belonged. She studied Nyla a beat too long, hazel eyes moving slowly from the outstretched basket to the glimmering charm of her smile. A performer, indeed. Every inch of her was rehearsed.

“[color=#663399]Fortunate,[/color]” Thalia repeated, the word flattening beneath her inflection. “[color=#663399]A quaint euphemism for watching your legacy possibly razed by another’s ambition.[/color]” [i][color=#663399]Or watching your father’s honour flayed in council chambers,[/color][/i] she refrained from adding, [i][color=#663399]his life’s work reduced to ash in the mouths of gossipmongers.[/color][/i]  

She still didn’t know the whole of it. Her father had only told her the broadest outlines. Like how the court had lost faith in House Evercrest’s integrity. Debt? Treason? A lordling’s petty grudge weaponized into ruin? He’d refused specifics, shielding her with omissions, as if ignorance might inoculate her against bitterness. [i]We retained the land. We have each other.[/i] As though dirt and dwindling kinship could stanch the hemorrhage of her pride.

Her mother, ever the pragmatist, had disagreed. Illness kept her rooted in the capital, a fiction as transparent as the letters Thalia had spotted before they’d left, which dripped with veiled directives about securing alliances through “advantageous connections.” She could picture her mother still: sequestered in their abandoned manor, penning pleas to former suitors, bartering nostalgia for a foothold in a court that had already spat them out. [i]Restoring the family’s standing,[/i] she called it. A poet’s term for auctioning dignity to the highest bidder.

[i]Lucky.[/i]

If that was luck, Thalia would hate to see misfortune.

Movement caught Thalia’s eye then—a woman approaching on a steady stride, wrapped in ceremonial layers. Not lavish, but there was a quiet finery to her robes, the kind that spoke of status earned through devotion, not coin. A priestess, clearly.

Lark stilled, ears pricking. Not in warning, just… recognition. That sense of interest he often saved for people who walked like they had a purpose.

The woman’s eyes flicked toward Thalia’s briefly—polite, distant—but it was the slight tension in her fingers as she passed Nyla that drew Thalia’s attention. Something flickered between them, almost too subtle to catch. A familiarity, maybe. Or discomfort.

Curious.

The priestess continued on,  not pausing, not speaking, and not so much as grazing Lark’s fur with her fingertips. Yet her gaze clung to him a moment too long, a fissure in her austerity. It was the look of someone denying an old reflex, like biting back a childhood endearment or resisting the pull of a melody once loved and long abandoned.

Thalia filed the reaction away for later. Lark could use some getting used to the place, after all.  She took a step back, eyes flicking down to the basket with the faintest glimmer of polite dismissal. 

“[color=#663399]I’ve already sampled the inn’s fare,[/color]” she said, her tone polished to a veneer of civility. “[color=#663399]The eggs are passable, if you don’t mind charring them yourself. A lesson in self-reliance, I suppose.[/color]” She hadn’t made herself any eggs, of course. Mainly because she didn’t know how to do so without possibly burning them. Had never needed to know.  

There was subtext to her words once again, however: Offer your trinkets to those still hungry for crumbs.

Thalia was already turning to head once more for her destination, her boots scoring fresh tracks in the snow as Lark fell into step beside her.  

“[color=#663399]Though I’d be careful near the hearth,[/color]” she added over her shoulder. “[color=#663399]Cold fingers tend to get burned when they reach for something already claimed.[/color]” 
[/indent]