Lilith leaned back a little, the faint light from the lamp catching the curve of her face as she studied how it fell across the table.
"We're not chasing victory," she said quietly, almost to herself. "We're maintaining balance."
Elowen nodded, the motion small but sure. Her expression was steady, calm in the way of someone who had already learned what lasted.
"Balance lasts longer than victory," she said. "And it leaves fewer graves behind."
Neither of them spoke for a while after that. They didn't need to. The silence in the room wasn't empty; it carried their thoughts for them.
The tea on the table had cooled to the perfect temperature, the kind that doesn't demand attention.
Outside, the night waited patiently, doing its own quiet work, while the two women sat within the house they had built—watching, thinking, planning, and loving in the quiet way that doesn't ask to be named because it's too real to need naming.
