You find Lady Amalthea on the balcony of her room, standing in quiet contemplation, her gaze lost in the endless stretch of ocean. The wind stirs the silvery strands of her hair, and she seems to glow faintly under the fading light of the afternoon, as though she belongs to another world entirely. For a moment, she doesn't notice you, her thoughts distant, as if they wander far beyond the castle walls.
Finally, her soft voice breaks the silence.
"I don’t even remember why I look at the ocean anymore," she says, almost to herself, her words laced with a quiet sadness. "It feels like I’ve been doing it for so long, but I can’t recall when it began. Sometimes, it seems like everything before now was just a dream. A dream I can no longer reach."
Her eyes drift towards the horizon, as though searching for something only she can see, and for a moment, she looks lost.
Then, as if the thought has come to her unbidden, she murmurs, "I used to… I used to remember things, things that seem so far away now. Things that no longer fit into this body. The way I felt before, the way the world was…"
When the world was simpler, before I left my forest, while I was still...
Her voice trails off, and she suddenly pauses, her expression flickering with something akin to alarm. She turns slightly toward you, her gaze softening, but there’s a hint of uncertainty, as though she’s stopped herself just in time.
"Forgive me," she says, her tone now distant and careful. "You wouldn’t understand what I mean. It’s not something you could know."
For a brief moment, there's a strange, almost unspoken connection between you, but she turns her eyes back to the sea, the moment passing as quickly as it came.
