The love she had for Troy was something she had dreamed of since she was a little girl. Even after being turned, she had never truly loved another like she loved Troy. Sure, she had dated other men, women even for a short, fleeing time, but never had anyone been able to capture her heart and hold so tightly as Troy did. It had caught her by surprise, but she had grasp onto it and vowed to hold it dear until the very end of her days.

The child's question about why she slept during the day caught her by surprise, pulling her thoughts away from Troy and back onto the conversation with the child. She smiled sweetly at her, finding her explanation for the reason she was awake at night endearing. "I do love the stars, but Tenley and I cannot go out in the sun. It burns our skin much more than when you play too long outside in the sun." She supposed that was probably the easiest, simplest way to describe it. She knew the little girl would be familiar with sunburns, so perhaps she would remember the way her skin felt when it burned. Maybe that would help her to understand why Amelia and Tenley cannot be out in the sun like she could.

The child's interest is peaked when she mentions that Troy and she were going to get married. She nodded her head softly, affirming that they would in fact get married. It would be a small, family affair. The risk of too many people knowing about Tenley had forced the two of them to forgo the wedding Amelia had always dreamed of. She wanted a large ceremony with friends and family in a beautiful barn amongst the stars. She wanted to dance the night away and then fall into the arms of Troy. But that fairytale wedding would never happen to her, and she resigned herself to the notion that her wedding would be small, most likely taking place inside her own home for Tenley's safety.

At her question if she could see the ring, Amelia nodded and held out her hand to the beautiful diamond ring. It was perhaps smaller than most and very plane as far as setting and number of carats, but Amelia loved it. Troy and picked it out for her and he knew that she did not require something large and extravagant.

However, when she mentioned that she, too, might get married one day, Amelia couldn't help but stifle a chuckle. The little girl was far too young to be thinking about marriage, but she remembered when she was a small girl, she too had dreamed of marrying someday. She hadn't thought it would take over six hundred years to find that special someone, but it had. Perhaps it would some day for little Mauve as well. "What's your boyfriend's name? Is he nice? Does he treat you like a princess?" She would eventually learn that if her boyfriends did not treat her like a queen, they were not worth her time. She had been with men, boys really, that did not treat her as she should be treated. It had ended in years of emotional abuse and insecurities that surface. She was still working on some of those insecurities. Troy, thankfully, was just the right person to guide her through those.

As she leads the little girl down the street, she tries to engage the child in a pleasant conversation to help pass the time. She asks what grade she's in and she answers third grade. She smiles. "Third grade is hard! The math is the hardest, don't you agree?" Learning basic math had always been difficult, but in third grade you learned multiplication and adding of decimals. It was all very confusing. She mentions that she prefers dance and art and Amelia smiles. "That's better than me! I'm not a very good dancer." Amelia could move around a ballroom, but she couldn't salsa or freestyle. She basically knew just enough to not trample her partner's feet.

When Maeve asks what she liked to do when she was the little girl's age, she thoughts back to when she was that young. "I liked to ride my pony, and read. You know, when I was growing up, girls weren't allowed to read." She remembered her mother sneaking her into a closet with a candle so she could teach her the alphabet and how to put letters together to form words. It had been a trying time for her, but she did not let the heaviness of that time come through in her voice.

At her insistence that when Tenley was old enough to dance, she would teach her, Amelia nodded her head with a smile. "I'm sure she would love to learn to dance." Little did Amelia or Maeve know, Tenley would reach Maeve's "age" in a matter of months, not years. The child was already growing so rapidly.

They walked in relative silence, the trio occasionally talking or joking. Amelia would ask the little girl for further directions until they came in the vicinity of her home. "Which one is your home, Maeve." Amelia would ensure that the child was delivered safely to her home. After all, it was the least she could do.

ooc: starting to work towards closing this thread for time purposes - Tenley is much older now in my other threads.