DAMIEN
I know it's been a long time coming
I'm angry and I know that's weak
I'm angry and I know that's weak
Damien leaned back slightly as she worked, the scrape of her thread through fur and fabric steady against the low murmur of the workshop. He’d heard of Ludo’s masquerade, of course—everyone had, by now—but he wouldn't go. Not his sort of thing, he’d told himself. The press of strangers, the games of masks and meaning. Still, as she spoke, he felt the echo of that choice tugging at him. Masquerades were anonymity, after all. To be no one, and perhaps in that, to be anyone. He wasn’t sure if what gnawed at him was regret or curiosity. Maybe both. Maybe something else, something he couldn’t name.
His attention drifted back to her hands as she matched the fox fur to the black garment, her ease with the task plain in the way she moved. When she looked up at him with that flicker of humor, he found the corner of his mouth curving in answer, unthinking.
But her explanation of her gift pulled him quieter, thoughtful in a way that sat deep in his chest. A conduit, he thought. Not pulling threads of fate but holding them up to the light for others to see. When she said that people so often failed to see themselves clearly, something in him caught. He hummed low, rough in his throat but thoughtful all the same.
“I think for some of those people, it’s not that they can’t,” he said after a pause, voice steady but softer than before. “They can. They just don’t want to. Easier to deny it than face what stares back.” His gaze slipped past her for a moment, into the dark grain of the scarred tabletop, then back again. There was truth in it he didn’t voice, old habits of silence tamping down the rest. The nights where he felt alone as the moon, the mornings where the sun rose and he barely felt its warmth—those were his burdens to hold, not something to lay bare before a near stranger. Still, he couldn’t quite shake the thought of her words, how being confronted with oneself could be as frightening as it was clarifying.
He tilted his head, curiosity rising through the restraint. “Have you met Ludo before? Or any of the heralds?” The question came even, but behind it lingered the faint pull of that earlier longing, the quiet wondering of what it might be to stand face to face with a god who wore many masks.
His attention drifted back to her hands as she matched the fox fur to the black garment, her ease with the task plain in the way she moved. When she looked up at him with that flicker of humor, he found the corner of his mouth curving in answer, unthinking.
But her explanation of her gift pulled him quieter, thoughtful in a way that sat deep in his chest. A conduit, he thought. Not pulling threads of fate but holding them up to the light for others to see. When she said that people so often failed to see themselves clearly, something in him caught. He hummed low, rough in his throat but thoughtful all the same.
“I think for some of those people, it’s not that they can’t,” he said after a pause, voice steady but softer than before. “They can. They just don’t want to. Easier to deny it than face what stares back.” His gaze slipped past her for a moment, into the dark grain of the scarred tabletop, then back again. There was truth in it he didn’t voice, old habits of silence tamping down the rest. The nights where he felt alone as the moon, the mornings where the sun rose and he barely felt its warmth—those were his burdens to hold, not something to lay bare before a near stranger. Still, he couldn’t quite shake the thought of her words, how being confronted with oneself could be as frightening as it was clarifying.
He tilted his head, curiosity rising through the restraint. “Have you met Ludo before? Or any of the heralds?” The question came even, but behind it lingered the faint pull of that earlier longing, the quiet wondering of what it might be to stand face to face with a god who wore many masks.
And I'm longing out that open window
For whatever it is I seek
For whatever it is I seek
