"If I could fly I would never come back", you said
Doubt wormed it's way through the basalt foundation like creeping vines, finding and exploiting minute cracks and inconsistencies in what seemed from the outside to be an impenetrable fortress of conviction. It wasn't that Maea really believed that she was wrong to think the way she did - about life and death and the responsibility living things had towards one another - but the simple fact that so many could live and be alright with something she could not accept, led her to wonder what she wasn't seeing. Was her logic flawed? Was she mixing in emotion where it shouldn't be? Was she being rigid in the wrong places, fluid where it didn't matter – had she misunderstood something so fundamentally, and that was why Thalassa was done with her?
Plagued by questions she found no answers to in thought or dream, she took her reflections out into nature. Seated upon a branch overlooking the Stone Symphony, in crow form so as not to disturb the wildlife, she watched them. Birds, insects, a mother crocodile sitting upon a nest of eggs in the rush, the occasional pod of encantados swimming past like shadows beneath the surface – all going about their lives, all locked in the struggle for survival, reproduction, all on the inevitable path from birth to death. That much she understood. That part she could internalise and accept. You were born, you lived, and one day you died. If gods or magic interfered, perhaps the cycle could be disrupted a bit or restarted for a slightly longer existence – she was an example, as was the companions who might otherwise live far shorter lives than if they never bonded, and the demigods seemed wholly removed from Mort's guest list for the duration of their service to the gods – but for most things, death was inevitable.
So where did the Ancient fit into the pattern? Where did any of them fit? At a glance, humans seemed very far removed from the circle. The way they shaped nature and themselves made them seem apart from the rest of creation. She struggled to equate a lone woman walking down an alleyway into the waiting arms of thugs with a kingfisher spearing its next meal on the beak. It was one thing to see wolves hunt deer, and another to accept wolves turning on each other.
Ruffling her feathers and burrowing her beak into the fluff off her chest, the gore crow glowered at the crocodile. The eggs were near to hatching, and she waited expectantly for dusk to fall. There were other crocodiles in the area. The young would be a prime target for many a predator and she wanted to see what would happen. If they would prey on their own. If they would ignore them, protect them – if there was any kind of truth to be found in anything outside herself and the experiences that shaped her into who she was today.
Plagued by questions she found no answers to in thought or dream, she took her reflections out into nature. Seated upon a branch overlooking the Stone Symphony, in crow form so as not to disturb the wildlife, she watched them. Birds, insects, a mother crocodile sitting upon a nest of eggs in the rush, the occasional pod of encantados swimming past like shadows beneath the surface – all going about their lives, all locked in the struggle for survival, reproduction, all on the inevitable path from birth to death. That much she understood. That part she could internalise and accept. You were born, you lived, and one day you died. If gods or magic interfered, perhaps the cycle could be disrupted a bit or restarted for a slightly longer existence – she was an example, as was the companions who might otherwise live far shorter lives than if they never bonded, and the demigods seemed wholly removed from Mort's guest list for the duration of their service to the gods – but for most things, death was inevitable.
So where did the Ancient fit into the pattern? Where did any of them fit? At a glance, humans seemed very far removed from the circle. The way they shaped nature and themselves made them seem apart from the rest of creation. She struggled to equate a lone woman walking down an alleyway into the waiting arms of thugs with a kingfisher spearing its next meal on the beak. It was one thing to see wolves hunt deer, and another to accept wolves turning on each other.
Ruffling her feathers and burrowing her beak into the fluff off her chest, the gore crow glowered at the crocodile. The eggs were near to hatching, and she waited expectantly for dusk to fall. There were other crocodiles in the area. The young would be a prime target for many a predator and she wanted to see what would happen. If they would prey on their own. If they would ignore them, protect them – if there was any kind of truth to be found in anything outside herself and the experiences that shaped her into who she was today.
Maea
