( for the moment, eda is an attentive student. she watches with interest as hunter demonstrates the breathing technique for her again, pretending as if it were for her benefit rather than his. it's something simple, something she already guessed with first look, but eda still follows along with him.

slowly, she takes in large inhales, holds it, and then exhales while counting along with her fingers. a mirror of hunter's actions.

one. two. three. four.

breathe.

it's funny. maybe this had been for her benefit as well. breathing alongside the kid has managed to help settle some of the upset churning her stomach, calm some of her fraught nerves. )

I didn't hear anything if you didn't want me to.

( an easy answer.

hunter has already been rubbed raw, an open wound of misery. they didn't have to talk about this now. or ever. not if he didn't want to. eda didn't exactly feel like he owed her anything and she wasn't really looking for anything either. she already knew without asking that life in the emperor's coven is much less than it's cracked up to be. her childish idealisations in her youth were never anything other than falsehoods.

it's something she'd long since known. although, she's been long since discovering that the scope was much wider than she thought. since lilith had been ousted, she had been more than vocal about the conditions they experienced. what the scouts went through. what belos took from them. luz had cracked the already thin floor under that after that whole mindscape spell debacle, revealing that things were far worse than lilith ever knew.

and hunter had it worst of all. believing wholly in his "uncle".

eda moves to fold her legs in front of her, sitting across from hunter. )

But you don't have anything to be ashamed about. Sometimes we get dealt a crap hand by life.

( then she holds her hands together, palms upwards. she bends the tips of her fingers, gesturing for hunter to place his hands on hers. )