On Mount Alyppia

Secrets

"Why have you not told her?" Daphne demanded once the girl was out of earshot.

Vivalius winced. He had known the question was coming and had dreaded it, not sure how to answer. His answers barely satisfied him. They would not satisfy her.

"It would hurt her more than help her.".

"How do you know?" Daphne challenged.

Vivalius sighed. "Look at her," he said. "She has lived on the streets her whole life. She will think she had been abandoned."

Daphne raised an eyebrow. "And to remedy that you abandon her?"

Vivalius looked away. He could still smell the girl's scent lingering in the room, and could hear her breathing and heartbeat in the floor below. "It isn't abandoning her, it's leaving her to live her life," he said. "And anyway, why do you care? You view most humans as nothing more than fertilizer."

Daphne shrugged. "This one is different," she said thoughtfully. "She isn't cutting trees or burning forests or driving nymphs into the ground with gold spears, or anything really. She is just small. And scared. Like it or not... I think you need someone like that, Viv. Need her."

He sighed. "Maybe. But she doesn't need me."

"That is where you are wrong," Daphne said simply.