softly, as i leave you

Mythra looks around. They're not in a quiet, still dressing room, where the players can prepare each private signal for the educated theory of the game they're about to play; instead, the preface patio of the Soaring Rostrum is blustered with wind and noise, sound and fury. Well, yes, quiet, but not...not undetectable.

In a word, their group is very alive.

Lora is fidgeting with some frayed ends of her whips; Jin is scratching rare tarnish off his sword; Haze leans on her crosier and then nudges her Driver to offer an almost-closed fist. A pinky promise. Something juvenile, but intrinsically sweet, and a little bitter in its saccharine shine. Just a little gesture. The little gestures are what make up our lives.

Addam is adjusting his armbands, scratching beneath the leather that's been strapped, attached, to his forearms for almost an entire year running; he's had no chance to farm, no chance to relax even as his attitude always seems to be that of an anti-hanged man who can fall to no drear.

Minoth, quite the opposite, always, stands slightly removed from the man accidentally, or perhaps not so accidentally, acting his Driver, tying up his hair but seeming to flag at it, being purposefully dissatisfied with the composition of the place where the knot will cinch.

Mythra, of course, finds herself spending more time observing those two, because they're the bookends of the trio into which she should fit. She should know more about them, shouldn't she? Both to justify and to reprimand, she should.

Hugo is conferring with Aegaeon about something that looks remarkably grave, and Mythra trusts it, almost has to resist the temptation to roll her eyes at it, until Brighid stamps over and removes the golden wing brooch from the emperor's hair. Of course. You don't need that, where we're going. None of your citizens need to see it. Malos isn't going to bother to look, and if it means so much, then obviously you don't want to lose it.

So then, Mythra looks at herself. Her diadem is fixed in her hair by some ether's ethereal glue as much as it is stuck in by the headband, firmly shoved, and the feathers perch up a delicateness that she just does not have. She's never been one for pinky promises, or ponytails, or...or parents.

It's a movie that she watches, each actor moving in stopped-up motion. Their fluidity belongs to them and them alone. It does not belong to her.

She doesn't leave softly - right now, she doesn't plan to leave at all - but Mythra thinks, boy am I glad this is over. Gotta get out of here, showtime, before they really start to care about me. Before I really start to care about them.

Then Addam turns, and looks her way. She's standing off away from where they'll march to Malos, almost jumped off the cliff. Addam turns, and Hugo notices, then Aegaeon, then Brighid, then Lora, then Haze, then Jin, then Minoth.

It breaks her heart. Of course it does. Because in the front of her Core, Mythra knows that they're relying on her, and somewhere in the back of her Core, Mythra knows that they're doing more than just that. Over it all, she knows that this family may not (Foresight tries to tell her, weakly, will not) make it out of this battle in one piece.