[She doesn't mean to startle him. Questions of intent are all too easily lost, as unseen as all the rest. Perhaps if it didn't feel so personal, perhaps if the familiar weren't also rendered both foreign and frightening by circumstance, by the way it arrives.
OA has missed blindness before, missed what made her world her own. Sight had made it... smaller. Beautiful, yes. Simpler and more complicated in turns. This feels like sick vengeance, a joke played upon her for her failure to adapt with perfect grace to the painful facets of change.
She walks to rediscover it, wanders with the imperfect aid of a makeshift walking stick through the dim, fogged landscape of the forest, slow and cautious, mindful of the path. And, yes, the stick snaps, and yes, he is startled. So is she; his abrupt motion inspires a gasp, a flutter of fear which subsides, fading to a weak, giddy laugh when he speaks. Just another wandering soul.]
I don't think the woods can belong to anyone.
[It's not an admonishment, just a gentle acceptance: he has as much right to be here as she does. In the wake of the exchange, though, she's left... uncertain, uncomfortable. Is he looking at her? She feels as though he is, and the sensation is not one she's experienced in years. Watched, unable to watch in turn. Part of her is elsewhere, under the unwelcome gaze of the man who would crush her, and her skin crawls at the memory. She tries on a tenuous smile, eyes downcast.]
Forest
OA has missed blindness before, missed what made her world her own. Sight had made it... smaller. Beautiful, yes. Simpler and more complicated in turns. This feels like sick vengeance, a joke played upon her for her failure to adapt with perfect grace to the painful facets of change.
She walks to rediscover it, wanders with the imperfect aid of a makeshift walking stick through the dim, fogged landscape of the forest, slow and cautious, mindful of the path. And, yes, the stick snaps, and yes, he is startled. So is she; his abrupt motion inspires a gasp, a flutter of fear which subsides, fading to a weak, giddy laugh when he speaks. Just another wandering soul.]
I don't think the woods can belong to anyone.
[It's not an admonishment, just a gentle acceptance: he has as much right to be here as she does. In the wake of the exchange, though, she's left... uncertain, uncomfortable. Is he looking at her? She feels as though he is, and the sensation is not one she's experienced in years. Watched, unable to watch in turn. Part of her is elsewhere, under the unwelcome gaze of the man who would crush her, and her skin crawls at the memory. She tries on a tenuous smile, eyes downcast.]
Sorry. I didn't mean to startle you.