Event Private A Breath of Fresh Festival Air

Zora watched quietly as Felen sat down on the grass beside her. It was nice to be able to talk openly about how she had been feeling lately without the added feeling of being judged. Or worse, having someone humour her or think she was exaggerating. She sensed none of that as she slowly opened up to Felen.

"You are very right, death is not predictable," she agreed, her tone thoughtful, as she turned her head slightly to look at his demon hand and wondered, not for the first time either, how he had come to possess it. Normally her senses would have cautioned her against Felen, but for some reason, maybe it was the purity of his heart or of his purpose - she really did not know - but something overrode the uneasy sense she normally got from cursed objects or beings.

"I do know I'm not cursed," she began as she looked up from his hand. "It just feels like it some days. And I admit that not sleeping properly and isolating myself or burying my head in work is probably not helping things either." she admitted with a resigned sigh jjust as a pretty orangey colored butterfly landed on her knee, quietly catching her attention. Butterflies were omens supposedly.

'Do you believe there's anything beyond the void, beyond death, Felen?" she asked her bodyguard as she focused on the butterfly on her leg, careful to stay still lest she scare it away.

As Felen spoke to her openly about his own thoughts on the afterlife, Zora listened calmly and with great interested as her gaze stared unseeingly at the butterfly that had, just moments earlier, landed on her leg.

"I honestly don't know what to think anymore," Zora admitted when Felen was finished describing his point of view. She liked the idea of a person living on through their actions, but she also liked the idea of life being an endless circle. And that when a person died their soul, or life energy, didn't die with them but continued on somehow.

"I grew up in a household where death was not considered our final journey. That our life forces could continue on, becoming part of nature or even being reborn in another living object or vessel," she mused as she watched the butterfly take flight.

"However, I have not really experienced any of that," she said with a tiny frown."And find such an idea difficult to believe. Dead is dead in my mind, and you don't come back from that." Zora said as she thought about her mother and her brother and other people she had known that had passed away.

Felen's words were eerily accurate and they made Zora blanch and then look away and down, ashamed and embarrassed by the fact that, yes, her thoughts were consumed lately with death and the idea of losing those around her. And in some ways, it felt like more than just a crisis of faith to Zora. It felt like she had no faith left at all. No faith that things would ever get better, and a very tangible feeling of panic and despair at times that Broen's suicide had broken her beyond all repair and that she'd never properly recover from it.

Watching Felen out of the corner of her eye, Zora hesitated momentarily when he asked her to lie down in the grass with him and close her eyes.

"Okay..." she replied softly and without question, deciding to place her trust in Felen and the fact that he knew what he was doing and that he would keep her safe no matter what.

Laying back in the soft cool grass next to Felen, Zora stared up for a few minutes at the clouds that could be seen above the canopy. Feeling a mild sense of peace at the simple act of communing with nature, she closed her eyes and just relaxed, focusing first on her breathing and then after a short while, the sounds and smells of the forest surrounding them.

"I can hear birds," she said finally, "and water, I think. A stream or small river, maybe?" she stated with some uncertainty.

"And I can smell..," here she frowned, unsure of what she was smelling, her eyes still closed, "I can smell the grass, the ground and something fresh...green," she said somewhat frustrated, she couldn't identify anymore the wild herbs that were once so familiar to her.

Zora quietened down almost immediately when as she felt Felen's hand touch her shoulder, reassuring her that everything was going to be okay. The anxiousness that persistently seemed to hang around the corners of her psyche lately, started to slowly dissolve.

Keeping her eyes closed, Zoraida turned her head a little towards Felen and listened to his voice which she found soft and calming.

"I ...I don't know. Maybe?" Zora remarked very hesitantly. She did feel something around her, something calming, but also energizing. Unfortunately, her grandfather was the one most in tune with nature and the energy surrounding them, Something Zora always had envied.

"I feel like ... when I am floating in warm water," was the best analogy she had. Water was her element, and any connection with it always made her feel better. A fact that now wasn't lost on her... she should be spending time out near the ocean, not cooped up inside. It would probably help her heal to some extent.

At Felen's question, Zora just slowly shook her head. He was right. Elves always were, especially when it came to nature she found. They were more in tune with the wprld around them than she could ever hope to be.

Zora slowly opened her eyes and stared calmly up at Felen as he talked. Although, she made no real attempt to sit up though and preferred to continue laying there in the grass while she listened and considered everything he was telling her.

"I know," she sighed tiredly, but not sadly. "I know now that being cooped up is not healthy, and I think I need to make some tiny, well, maybe not tiny changes, but a few real changes. Broen is gone, but I'm not. And I need to move forward somehow," she admitted with some uncertainty.

"Maybe next week, I will finally look into buying, or renting a place near the beach," she said as she sat up finally. "I miss the ocean, and I am beginning to miss not having a real home to go home to," she admitted, thinking it was time to let the house go, and find a new place to live.