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You have destroyed and defaced every symbol on your gear, cut and dyed your hair, and otherwise divested yourself of all the trappings of your time as one of Shar's puppets... or nearly all of them.
There still remains the issue of the idol. You'd taken it down from its place of pride and covered it in cloaks and buried it in your pack in shame while you were still reeling from your defiance of, and subsequent abandonment by, your former mistress. There it still sat. Taunting you, a dreadful sentimentality coiled up in a tight ball in your chest at the thought of throwing it away.
Of all the things to be sentimental about; an icon of the Lady of Loss.
But there it was, and there it remained. The idol had been a gift. The first gift Adana had ever given you. The first gift you had any memory of ever receiving from anyone, actually. And it had to be an expensive one, too, the details too perfect, too delicate to be made by anything short of a master's hand. Though that Adana had quite blatantly stolen it from Grymforge to give it to you had... only made it a more appropriately Sharran gift, really. If there could be such a thing.
You want nothing more than to throw it in a river, in a ditch, down a well-- let it fall somewhere deep in the dark where only someone as blind and miserable as you had been would find it. Or perhaps you want to take your mace to it, smash it to pieces in your hands and grind it down to dust until it is even smaller and insignificant than you had felt when she had abandoned you.
…But it had been a gift. You’d not received so many of those in your life as to just go around throwing them away.
You sigh exasperatedly and toss it aside, the bundle of cloaks around it preventing it from coming to any real harm. It would have certainly been convenient, perhaps even something of a sign, if it had chosen to crack in half right then. But you were not to be so blessed. Even old stone did not break so easily.
Adana's voice draws you out of your brooding. "You look like you're trying to set that thing on fire with your mind." You hadn’t even noticed her joining you.
"It would certainly save me the trouble of setting it on fire with my hands," you sigh, glancing to where she's snuck up on you and stolen your stool, perched in her queer little way as if she's deliberately trying to contort herself into as unladylike a position as possible.
Adana grins. "Now what's the poor thing done to deserve that?"
You wordlessly untie the bundle, letting the cloaks unspool themselves and send the idol tumbling to the ground with the most unimpressed look you can muster.
Adana’s eyes widen. "...Ah."
"Yes, 'ah,'" you agree flatly.
Adana swallows uncomfortably. "Is that... the one I gave you?"
You raise an eyebrow at her. "Did you think I had duplicates made?"
"Well, no. I'd noticed you'd stopped putting it up in camp, but..." she shrugs helplessly. “I just thought you’d gotten rid of it already. When you’d, you know.” Another shrug, coupled with a nod at what you presume to be your hair.
You sigh again. "Yes, well, it's proven to be more troublesome than the rest of it."
She grins at you. "More troublesome than bleaching all of that in one night?"
"...Ha. Perhaps not that troublesome." You pick up the idol then, turning it over in your hands for a moment. It is beautiful, considered solely as a piece of artwork. A perfect likeness, as beautiful and terrible as the night itself.
But that isn't why you can't let it go.
"...It's because it came from you," you say softly. "I don't... I'd never..." You sigh again. "Sharrans aren't supposed to accept gifts. They certainly don't go around giving them. No one had ever… had ever looked at something and thought of me before. It was yet another of your kindnesses that was completely new to me."
You swallow a lump in your throat. "Just throwing it away… would feel too much like throwing that memory away. And I don’t have memories to lose.”
Adana slips off the stool and sits next to you on the mat, bumping her shoulder against yours. "You don't have to throw it away, you know. There are options beyond just 'keeping the idol of an evil, miserable goddess who hates you' and 'throwing it in the Chionthar.'"
"I suppose we could also smash it to smithereens," you say dryly.
"We could do that," Adana agrees, ever the diplomat. "We could even make something from the pieces, if you'd like. Or once we get to the city, we could see if an artisan couldn't chisel it into something less unseemly.”
She turns to grin at you. “Or we could paint it a particularly garish yellow. That could be fun.”
"She would certainly hate that," you say, finding a smile twitching at the corner of your own mouth, but...
You turn the idol over in your hands again. "...And if I do end up smashing it to pieces and throwing them in the river? What then? Would you begrudge me that?" You turn to look at her, feeling suddenly so very, very small. "I don't mean to be ungrateful--"
Adana cuts you off, placing a hand over yours in your lap."--then I will be as happy as you are that you've smashed that thing to pieces and thrown them into the river." She scoots closer, leaning her head against yours and looking into your eyes. "I gave that to you to make you happy. If getting rid of it is what makes you happy now, then that’s what we should do. So no, you don't owe me anything; least of all 'sufficient gratitude.'"
It can’t possibly be that simple… can it? Are you such a child still, so desperate for reassurance and absolution before you can act? Pathetic. Ridiculous.
But still something in the back of your mind unclenches, a weight lifted from your shoulders, and you sigh in relief before you even realize you're doing it. “Then,” you finally decide, “perhaps we ought to smash it to pieces and throw it in the river.”
“Far be it from me to gainsay the lady with the mace," Adana says with a grin as she climbs to her feet, turning to offer you a hand up. "After you?"
You take the hand and return the smile, but when she pulls you up, you... find yourself stopping short, keeping a hold of her hand in yours. Slowly twining your fingers together.
Once, you would have pulled away as quickly as possible, if you'd accepted her hand at all. Once, even this minuscule intimacy would have felt so very out of reach for you. Something to be justified, rationalized, reasoned away-- or otherwise only done with the threat of future penance for your indiscretion hanging over your head like an executioner's axe.
It finally occurs to you that you... will never have to do that again. You can just do things now, for the sole purpose of simply wanting to do them. No goddess demands you justify your whims.
Before you even know what you're doing, you're leaning in, your free hand coming up and tangling in her hair and pulling her into you, your mouth molding to hers.
It's terribly clumsy and overenthusiastic, more like a blushing virgin of a farm boy's first kiss than an artful seduction; a spur of the moment decision made without considering your relative positions or the fact that you haven't kissed her, (or anyone else) since that night at the waterfall.
But it's real. And it's your choice to do it, and yours alone, without a thought for anyone else-- a thought that nearly jars you out of yourself entirely, a thousand apologies bubbling to your lips stopped only by Adana laughing softly into your mouth and relaxing into you, her hand coming up to cup your cheek and gently correct your angle.
She keeps close when you both finally pull away to breathe, her forehead against yours, her eyes sparkling, grinning like a fool… and you can feel yourself doing the same.
"I... Sorry, it just occurred to me that I could... do that,” you start, breathless and more than a little terrified as you pull back. “That I can do just that. That I can just… be with you. That I can kiss you anytime I want. Well, not anytime. Within reason."
“...No,” Adana makes a choked noise, something between a cough and a laugh, gripping your shoulder as she leans heavily into you. “No, love, I’m pretty sure you can do that anytime you want.”
You find yourself smirking, and you nudge Adana back in the direction of your tent. “Then perhaps the smashing can wait for us to see the terrible thing off… properly, first.”
Adana’s eyes crinkle, and she sketches a little bow, her hand still firmly entwined with yours. “After you?”