The Pull

***Ares*** Ophelia pauses with her hand almost to the handle of the patio door. She lets out a slow, defeated sigh, and her arm drops limply to her side. When she looks back at me her eyes are bereft, and it truly is as if she is searching for something that should be there but wasn't. Her aura is a murky fog, colours muddied together, mirroring the helpless feeling she carries inside. It looks different now, but it is not back to how it once was. The mark of Electra was still inside her. “I don’t know what to do with myself,” she admits, turning fully to me. I step forward and draw her in, my arms closing around her small form. She still feels stronger than she used to, but her sense of self is thinning by the minute, fraying more and more since the ritual. “Do you want to go inside?”