WESSEX
“The way my mother used to tell it, a lot of them were stupid. The barrier would fry anyone who came to close to it, and generation after generation there were always a few idiots who would try their luck. Between that and disease and famine, our numbers quickly fell.” She can talk about with almost a callous matter-of-factness, because there’s distance. They’re people she doesn’t know. Her name, of course, but little more than that and it’s easy to shake her head and condemn them. Except she knows how it feels, to want out. To remember the way it used to be. “I know how it feels, to want out. To lose the world, it -” Cutting herself off, she shakes her head, unable to voice what it must have felt like. Everyone had lost something, hadn’t they? In Aamu’s case, his life. The Grounders lost their freedom. The Old Gods abandoned their heralds. She sighs and lets the rocks roll the other direction, enjoying the clacking sound they make against each other.
“I had a sister. She - she would have been a good mother. She would have liked to make more of us.” Looking over at him as he becomes terse, offering nothing of himself.
“That bad, huh?” A poor attempt at a joke, an attempt to keep the door open between them. Her head tilts a bit to watch him, to see if she’s unknowingly asking the wrong thing or if he’s just an excessively private old man.
No, I’ll be the stone
I’ll be the hunter, a tower that casts the shade
I lie awake and watch it all
I’ll be the hunter, a tower that casts the shade
I lie awake and watch it all
