[attr="class","mimi"]silence reigns, and this time it's not of the comfortable kind. mimi's at a loss. she knows, she thinks, she can't speak. she wasn't ready for this when she got the news, the exact moment so easily recallable in her mind that it might as well have just happened, and she isn't ready for it still.

a shaky breath, and clumsy too-direct words stumble upon each other.

"is suicide your answer, then?"

how to help someone cope with loss when you're in a different state of grief? she doesn't know. she probably needs another thirty years, and then sixty more.

[attr="class","seelie"]LANCE VOLLANS

[attr="class","mimi"]"it was at one point."

the sadness in his eyes is not lost in the moment. he blinks, shedding layers from them.

"i lost everything, mimi."

[attr="class","seelie"]Mimi Cheng

[attr="class","mimi"]is it pain or annoyance that drives her next words? she doesn't know anymore. it's almost funny. she's turned thirty-three this year, but fate's brought so many uncertainties to her life that she doesn't feel it at all.

"you lost the two people most important to you," she concedes, "but you did not lose everything."

her voice is firm, the complete opposite of the sea she could see herself being lost in. to balance it out. to reassure with her tone what she couldn't do with her words. lance or herself, whichever of them it worked on. neither, probably. her eyes follow a tear down his cheek, but her feet are attached to the ground under the weight of the departed.

"you didn't lose everything," she repeats in a whisper.

[attr="class","seelie"]LANCE VOLLANS