Welcome to Gaia! ::

It was strange that Daphne was almost getting used to the winters on Earth. She still hated them, of course.She still stayed inside for most of it, wrapped up under her piles of blankets and waiting for summer, but the frost and the wind and the snow didn’t feel as wrong as it had when she’d first come here. It was part of life now. It was part of her life now.

She could peel herself from the bed when she had to, for work of course, but even sometimes for other things.

She would go out at night to visit the grave, or just to sit in the park as Daphne.She’d been doing her best to settle into life at the bakery, but there was more to her than that. There were things that she couldn’t forget.

People that she couldn’t forget.

She was walking through the park powered up when the Chaos aura came near. Her eyes were set, maybe a little teary because she’d been letting herself reminisce. She stopped short, though, and started looking around.

“Who’s there?” she called out. There were many things that something like this could mean.

An agent. A sword. Daphne stepped forwards slowly, looking her over with a sideways glance, refusing to quite look at her directly. Her tail flicked when she saw the woman looking at it, and she crossed her arms over her chest, daring her to say something like Mauvian or alien. That was how so many of them got. Some of them got caught up on the fact that she wasn't human, as if that should change the fact that she was trying to keep Chaos from spreading across the universe.

Instead she asked if she was cold. Kind, but she wasn't about to fall for that kindness.

“No,” said Daphne, wrapping her hands tighter around herself.

She was lying. The magic helped regulate her temperature enough that she wasn’t freezing, but it didn’t mean she wasn’t going back to her blankets the second she had the chance. Her exposed skin was prickling a little into goosebumps, but she stood tall and defiant all the same.

“I am Daphne,” she said. A moment passed. “You are from the Negaverse.”

She wondered what would come next, this time. Would this be one of the ones who pitied her, one of the ones with tempting words about how Chaos was there with its arms open, about how it could fix what she'd lost? There had been times when she had been close, far too close, to accepting those promises, but today, she wasn't in the mood. There were better times, she thought, to give herself up if it came to that.

The cold, for all that she hated it, made her want to keep moving. It made her want to not give up until she had at least found somewhere a bit more comfortable for herself.

Vaguely, she wondered if it would be a fight. She didn't hate the thought of that. It would warm her up at least. She needed the practice, anyway. She still had her challenge to Alastor to live up to. If she could beat someone with a sword, she thought, it couldn't be so hard to win against him someday.

Daphne was silent for a long moment, watching. “I’m not going to try to persuade you to fight,” she said.

She was thinking of Retzian. The look in her eyes had been a little like that towards the end, Daphne thought. Not cruel or cold the way Chaos sometimes made people. Just, distant. Distant, the way that Daphne sometimes felt herself.

She wondered vaguely what had happened to the other woman. She hadn’t seen her now in so long.

Still, she wasn’t entirely sure that she should relax. “Why are you out here?” she asked, “If you don't want to fight?” She glanced over the other’s uniform. “You do have a jacket, but it would still be warmer under the blankets at home.”

Was there a point in trying to talk? Could she say anything useful? Her heart felt cold, empty. Still, she summoned a small candle from subspace, where the agent could see.