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[indent][indent][indent][color=#808080]Maylisse did not look back. The arena had yielded all it would for now; River’s petulant display had been instructive but only to a point. What remained needed time to settle, to crystallize into something more valuable than mere reaction, and distance would be sure to provide that necessary clarity.

As she stepped beyond the perimeter, the clamour of the arena softened into a distant, inconsequential murmur. The outside air held a keen, winter bite, a sharp reminder of physical fallibility that her own disciplined form had long learned to disregard. With a motion born of habit, she drew her coat snugly around her, fastening its toggles. Her course was already decided. Upon her arrival, she had accepted one of the proffered maps, its design revealing, perhaps unintentionally, a tacit hierarchy through placement alone. Centres of authority and utility clustered near the entrance: administration, the infirmary, and, most notably, the main hall. With adamantine focus, Maylisse had committed the entire layout to memory in a single, comprehensive glance.

Now, she followed that mental cartography, the path curving along the dormant activities field, its broad expanse lying subdued and emptied of any earlier activities, like the bonfire that Anissa had mentioned. Behind her to the east, the arena’s hulking silhouette already began to recede into oblivion, and ahead, emerging from a stand of mature oaks and pines, was the main hall. The building’s proximity to the entrance only seemed to reinforce its purpose as it was the first structure encountered upon arrival and, therefore, the first to impose the camp’s illusion of order. She reached the doors and paused only long enough to register the faint vibrations of movement within. Then, her hand closed around the handle before turning it. 

Warmth greeted her first—a dry, enveloping heat that emanated from radiators tucked beneath the high windows. It was not oppressive but the insistent kind that coaxes tension from bodies spent by exertion. The air also hung thick with layered fragrances: the savoury richness of roasted meats, the caramelized sweetness of glazed vegetables, the tang of preserved fruits. This all coalesced into a tantalizing vapour that drifted from the long buffet along the far wall, sustenance in excess of mere necessity. 

Maylisse stepped fully inside, allowing the door to sigh shut behind her. A few eyes flicked toward her as she did so before sliding away, too fatigued or too indifferent to sustain their attention. The hall itself seemed designed less as a utilitarian mess and more as a grand social chamber. Vaulted wooden ceilings absorbed the murmur of conversation and the clatter of cutlery into a soft, ambient drone. Tables lay scattered without strict regimentation, forming islands of socialization across the wide floor. Campers occupied them in a tableau of post-arena weariness. Some sat alone, like a red-haired man slowly eating his food, their focus turned entirely inward, while others leaned into hushed dialogues, the detritus of their meals in varying half-finished states before them. Some held themselves with stoic composure, eating with measured restraint; others had surrendered completely, consuming their food with a fervid, almost beggar-like hunger.

With a dispassionate eye, Maylisse took it all in before moving toward the buffet. Her gaze passed over the sugared pastries—glazed buns and fruit tarts glistening under the lights—registering their presence with a bit of distaste. Their appeal was unimaginative, their gratification immediate and unsophisticated. She dismissed them as one would dismiss a gaudy ornament unworthy of further consideration. Instead, her attention settled on the fish, specifically the smoked salmon laid in overlapping slices of deep coral and pale cream. She paused, her hand hovering for a fraction of a second longer than necessary.

There was, she supposed, a certain rich irony in it.

Daughter of Poseidon or not, she had been raised eating fish. Frequently. Almost ritually. The sea was not some sentimentalized kin; it was a resource, a dominion, a source of power as much as sustenance. Abstaining out of some nebulous reverence struck her as not just absurd but weak.

She served herself a generous portion of the salmon without ceremony, the slices cool and firm to the touch. She added two thick slabs of dark, seeded bread, then selected a wedge of cheese, something aged and striated with blue veins, unapologetic in its pungency. Her selections were rounded out with fruit: a scatter of plump blueberries, followed by precisely sliced apple and pear, arranged with an unconscious symmetry on her plate. Her full arrangement, by the end, was an exercise in considered abundance, full but not messy and ample without being indulgent.

Only then did she turn to the drinks. She bypassed the carafes of pulpy juice, her hand moving, purely by instinct, toward the large ceramic pot steaming gently at the station’s end. Tea. The motion was so deeply ingrained she scarcely registered it until the heat of the porcelain cup seeped into her palm. She poured carefully, watching the dark amber liquid bloom in the white cup, a fragrant, earthy steam curling upward in a filmy veil.

[color=#a9c9eb][i]Of course,[/i][/color] Maylisse thought, the ghost of a smirk touching her lips. The one truly civilized comfort in this entire rustic pantomime. Even here.

She added milk without hesitation; sugar, she ignored it entirely. The very idea was antithetical to the point. Why ruin the complex notes of a proper tea with a blunt, one-note sweetness? It made no sense.  So, with cup and saucer in one hand and plate balanced deftly in the other, Maylisse turned from the buffet. Her gaze drifted once more across the hall, this time with intention rather than idle appraisal.

The center tables were, of course, the worst possible choice. A locus of noise and overlapping conversation, they promised maximum visibility and the high probability of unwelcome interruption. So, to sit there was to offer oneself up as a participant in the general clamour, a notion she dismissed with contempt. 

At the opposite extreme were the fully isolated tables, tucked into corners or pressed against chilly windows. These were occupied by lone figures, people who had either claimed their seclusion purposefully or been stranded by it. Regardless, this, too, carried a distinct risk, for in a place like this, isolation was a statement. It invited interpretation. People would wonder why she sat alone, inventing narratives of loneliness, arrogance, or alienation. And that kind of speculation, Maylisse had learned, had a pernicious habit of spreading faster and sticking longer than truth.

No. Neither the center nor exile would do. So, Maylisse sought a tertium quid, her eyes alighting on a table for two, partially shielded by a stout wooden pillar. It was close enough to the room’s currents to appear unremarkable, yet sufficiently offset to afford a buffer. Perfect.

She moved towards it, the floorboards beneath her shoes absorbing the sound of her movement. A few glances trailed her progress, but they fell away quickly, their interest extinguished by what could only be her uninviting demeanour. Reaching the table, Maylisse set her plate down first, then her cup and saucer with a soft [i]click[/i] of porcelain on wood. She drew the chair back smoothly and sat, her posture erect but not rigid, and only then did she lift the cup to her lips for the first sip, allowing the heat to bloom gently across her tongue. 

[color=#a9c9eb][i]Ah. yes. A near-perfect cuppa.[/i][/color]

She let the cup lower back to its saucer, and only then did Maylisse pick up her fork, turning her attention at last to the food. The salmon yielded cleanly beneath the tines, cool, rich, and impeccably cured, and she ate without hurry, alternating measured bites with quiet sips of her tea. As she settled into the cadence of her old habit, her thoughts drifted backward to the moment before any of the things with Rosalia had unfurled.

To the silence.

To the way River had stayed seated beside her after her, admittedly, less-than-pleasant introduction.

He had not shifted away. He had not manufactured some flimsy pretext to leave under the guise of duty. He had not surrendered to the obvious pressure of her scrutiny by putting physical distance between them. Instead, he had remained, muscles coiled like springs, his attention fractured but his presence unwavering. He had endured her proximity with a stubborn, recusant stillness that had, she could admit privately, surprised her.

Most people would have just left. 

Maylisse could be honest about that, even if the acknowledgment carried some discomfort. She was not unaware of her effect on people like Goldilocks, for instance. Few were inclined to linger beneath a gaze that was neither casual nor warm but dissecting. They invented errands. They remembered urgent appointments. Distance was the instinctive defence against a perceived threat, and understandably so. 

But River had chosen the opposite. 

She took another bite, chewing slowly, and allowed the thought to solidify. He had known [i]exactly[/i] what she was doing. She was certain of it. Yet, he had not demanded she stop. He had not tried to dominate the space with bluster or noise. He had simply… endured. That required a particular kind of fortitude. It wasn’t courage, precisely—courage implied a positive thrust toward confrontation. This was more passive, more stubborn. A refusal to be maneuvered by discomfort alone. He had stayed, perhaps because leaving would have felt like conceding a point he was not prepared to relinquish. A semblance of control. Or maybe it had been a fundamental, unassailable dignity.

She lifted her tea again, the warmth of a soft press against her lips, and considered exactly how rare that was.

Even Anissa had stayed back in the stable when flight would have been easier. Maylisse had recognized then, as she did now, that the girl’s reasons were complex, of course, and more than likely rooted in her own internal pressures. But River’s choice felt different. It had been directed outward—a response to her, to the moment, to the silent challenge her presence had given. 

She exhaled softly, a barely perceptible release of breath through her nose, and set the cup down.

It was all… terribly inconvenient. 

She knew, of course, that she did not make things easy. Her manner alone was a frequent point of friction for many. People consistently mistook articulation for condescension, however, or her precision for cruelty. Still, she had been raised to speak this way—to value exactness over comfort, to favour clarity even when it cut. Words, to her, were implements. You selected the correct one for the task, and you did not blunt its edge to spare feelings because sparing feelings rarely spared anything of consequence in the end. It was a practical, unsentimental philosophy, calcified by a lifetime of observing how soft words so often led to hard consequences.
 

[right][i]Still. No wonder they flinched.[/i][/right] 

The salmon was nearly gone. Maylisse speared the last, perfect bite.[/color][/indent][/indent][/indent]
[hr][sub][color=9b9b9b][b][i]Location: Arena -> Main Hall 
Interactions: N/A
Mentions: River, Anissa, Iliana (indirectly lol), everyone in the main hall (indirectly), [/i][/b][/color][/sub]

[right][sup][color=#a9c9eb][b]#a9c9eb[/b][/color][color=2e2c2c]...[/color]|[color=2e2c2c]...[/color][url=https://i.pinimg.com/1200x/9e/d6/ba/9ed6ba913739602155ea7b1ec41975d3.jpg][color=9b9b9b][b]outfit[/b][/color][/url][/sup][/right]