[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/VgS66Jy.png[/img][/center][hr][sub][color=lemonchiffon]Location:[/color] The Sun Temple[/sub][hr][hr]

Tia shrank back from Dyna’s hard look – she knew this look. It wasn’t often that she saw it, but it stabbed at her with a familiar hurt all the same. Dyna, cold and sharp as steel, walled herself off where Tia couldn’t reach her so that she could do what needed to be done. But there was something different to it this time. The edge in her gaze seemed a little harsher. The grip on Tia’s hand seemed more clinical. Something had changed.

Well, Tia supposed, [i]many[/i] things had changed.

She could only step to the side and watch as Dyna arrested Gadez. Staff still planted on the ground, Tia moved closer to it, her other hand curling around the wooden haft. It wasn’t as if she could hide behind it – nor could it anchor her, with how carefully she had to hold it to keep from going off balance. But Tia moved around it like it had its own gravity. 

Dyna announced her orders. Her armor clanked and rubbed against cloth as she moved. The fire crackled in the hearth. And throughout it all, Gadez was silent.

Then his eyes, pale as the moon and burning as the sun, opened. They found Tia. Her hands tightened around the smooth, worn grain of the weapon’s haft. A glance. A nod. A wink. And then Dyna and Gadez were gone. It seemed as though they’d taken all the air with them.

Tia was frozen in the center of the room, clinging to the staff. The little bowl of soup still rested atop her bedside table. 

Her back to the door, Tia gave herself another breath to not be real. [color=2e2c2c][center][i][sub][sub]She was a blinding moment in the quiet of eternity.[/sub][/sub][/i][/center][/color]Then she turned, staff still held in place, to face the others at her broken door: Ranni with her nervous confusion, the hulking man with the unfamiliar accent, and Céline – [i]Céline[/i]. 

Tia shrank back into her room, as though another inch or two of distance would be enough to protect Céline from her roiling emotions. The doctor wasn’t safe here, not while Tia’s own mind threatened to drown her. Tia tried to muffle her nerves. Meeting Rani’s eyes, she fixed a weak smile on her face. She knew it was unconvincing. She knew the younger woman would have worries and questions. Tia held her gaze, her smile tightening as she willed her sister to understand – [i][color=lemonchiffon]It’s alright. Later.[/color][/i]

Her eyes moved past her sister to look to Céline deeper in the temple. She looked back to Ranni and repeated the gesture.

Tia knew Ranni’s emotions were likely a jumble just as hers were. But she seemed to be holding it together better than Tia was at the moment, and Tia knew that if she got much closer to the doctor, her emotions would threaten to overwhelm her. It had been enough of a struggle to protect Céline from Tia’s latent anxiety in the week they’d spent together in the temple with Gadez. Their first meeting flashed in Tia’s mind – Céline, delirious and ill after absorbing the wayward turmoil of another person. 

Between the two of them, Tia hoped that Ranni was the safer option to see to whatever the doctor needed. They’d been talking together just a moment ago, afterall. 

Which just left the unkempt giant taking up the full width of the hallway. Both hands still holding the staff to keep it balanced, Tia gave a small, hesitant bow in greeting.

[hr]
[sub][color=lemonchiffon]Interaction:[/color] Gadez Paladice [@Dezuel], Dyna and Ranni Soleil [@Queen Arya], Céline Moreau, Ivor the Wild [@SkeankySnack][/sub]