Donna adds neither, instead content to just hold her cup with both hands and allowing the warmth to penetrate her hands. Christian, obviously bored, has taken to look around the room and like any young boy, they lock onto the twin blades strapped to the Wizened's back. He points.
"Are they real?" he asks, curiously. Donna looks up and follows what he is pointing at. She swallows, hard, a spike of fear rolling out in a wave.
Christian shrugs. "A bad man?" he asks, looking beteen Simon and his mother. "He didn't hurt us but only wanted to be free, right ma?"
Donna looks down at her son and then up at Simon, nodding. When she spoke, it was of a woman barely holding things together. "He kept jabbering on about 'being free' and 'no more after this'. All I could think about was getting out of that damned place."
Simon frowns as he begins to understand. Lawrence may not have been a Loyalist after all. It may be that he was seeking his freedom from the Gentry in exchange for his assistance abducting new slaves. His fear of the terrible power and merciless nature of the Good Folk now mixed with furious anger at their manipulative ways that considered nothing but their own selfish and insane desires. In that moment Simon understood some of the rage felt by those who subscribed to the fury of Summer.
He's free now, in any case. he thinks while dismissing the twinge of regret he feels.
"There are beings on the other side of those thorny pathways we traveled. Terrible, unknowable, merciless things of frightening beauty and inhuman cruelty. Lawrence - the man who sought to kidnap you - intended to sell you both as slaves to those awful beings. He did so because he himself was a slave - just as I was until I escaped. I have rescued you from an eternity of torment and servitude that would have eroded your soul to nothing and warped your body into something like what mine's become. Perhaps something worse."
The youth of today. Too much televison and video games making the real horrors seemingly not quite so horrific.
Donna stands, not finishing her coffee. She still looks just as terrified as before. "We should head home. Thank you for your help," she adds, forcing a smile but still not managing to look directly at Simon, even if his fae mien is no longer visible to her senses. She has seen him for what he truly is and that is a fact that will never change. Donna pauses. "Will we be safe now?"
Part of Simon wanted to assure Donna that she would be safe. That she should not be troubled any longer.
But he couldn't do it.
"No." Simon frowns and shakes his head "Not safe. Perhaps in no danger, but never completely safe. We're dealing with powerful beings who don't function in the same moral systems that you do. They may try to take you again or you may live the rest of your lives unimpeded. Even I, who escaped their grasp, live with that fearful knowledge every day."
"You have to do what I've done. Your fear is a tool and it will serve you well. The dark and strange places and people fill you with trepidation for a reason and you must heed those feelings. It may be the only way you will keep your freedom."
As he spoke the smell of burning leaves mysteriously fills the air, and a cold breeze as bitter as an Autumn night blows through the room, though the window is closed. He was done preaching, though, and takes a sip of his coffee "Call me if anything strange goes on. I may be able to help you again, but I can't make any promises."
Donna sighs, taking Christian by the hand, shivering at the sudden chill. "Somehow, I knew you'd say that. "Just do me, us, a favour, Simon. Stay out of our lives. That's the least you can do." She then heads towards the front door, pulling her son along. He looks back and waves. "Bye, Simon."
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