"...No, not...

"There were very few people who died.  Most of them even emphatically deserved it.

"But...

"The tragedy of war is that after it's over, life goes on, but you never do.  A part of me died, in the moment of that vision, and I grieve its loss, beyond those souls I failed in my duty to.  Them, I can help now.  But I'll never not be the young woman who's seen too much and can never forget it.  Not after..."

She waves a hand, inchoately.

"All of this.

"...Be careful when you wish to live in interesting times, Rill.  You just might get it.  And you'll never know the cost you paid, til the dust settles and you don't."

A small part of Rill is disappointed at that last bit.

A lot more is relieved - she doesn't want to go digging into secret magics!  Does she? - and confused.

Eventually she settles on (while helping Alicia on with the black dress), "I'm sure you saw that for a good reason... and I hope you can live with it eventually."

...The way that that is so, incredibly, wrong, completely disjoint from her struggles, and yet still fitting to her cover story, turns the expression on her face as she works her way into today's clothes with what is perhaps a bit more force than necessary...

Rather bitter, for a moment too long.

She doesn't really know what to say in response, but eventually she finds something.

"...You're quite the optimist, to believe that the only terrible things I saw were my terrible problems to solve.  That some of the things I came to know of through having this vision hadn't already long since been in the past, for that matter.  But - perhaps.  Perhaps, someday.  Even so.  Perhaps that is enough talk of this."

A black dress, to match her bleak mood.  It's fitting.

She needs to talk to someone who isn't so naïve.  Where's her great-aunt?  Or Ciara?  Someone who might be able to understand.  Because right now, if she has to listen to more cheery platitudes, she will spontaneously reinvent Death Grip to get them to stop, just see if she doesn't.  ...That or she needs to go blow something up in her lab, but that would be...  Impolite, at best, after asking for her great-aunt's presence specifically.  Still, it sounds ever so tantalizing.

And yet beyond her petty wants she has a duty.

She sweeps towards the smaller receiving room, to greet her great-aunt, and break her fast.

Rill shivers.  She'd heard, of course, when Princess Alicia had been talking about finding cultists who were already cultists... but she didn't want to really think about evil things like that were already secretly going on around her.

Somehow, part of her would feel more comfortable with the petty disaster of the old Alicia back.

But - still - this one is so much better.  Maybe she'll get used to her soon.

Oh, Rill.  You poor thing.  You don't know the half of it.  ...You'll learn yet more unsettling truths, soon enough, and may the gods preserve you then.  She's not sure she can.  Alicia practically hands unsettling lore out like sweets, once you're in her circle, and she's hopelessly contaminated therewith, because it's this Alicia that already feels like she should be the 'normal' one.