who we are and all that we're trying to be
There were no expectations for this visit, beyond the notion of why he’d come; perceiving, presuming an absence of divinity to continue his wayward struggles with deities and answers. It would’ve been a habitual, routine state, to walk out with no reply, with no response, to continue mustering his own means and predilections, naught but a sigh tucked between teeth and tongue.
Except – darker folds flooded and pulsed, shadowed veils creeping over twilight abyss, giving away to hues and blends that might’ve reminded him of auroras, of summits with their ethereal, otherworldly qualities, a bright, stark trace nearly blinding him with veracity and bewilderment.
Then she was there, hums and gowns, and he blinked away the surprise, the shock, piercing eyes shifting to the ground, head hanging almost immediately. He waited for some rebuttal, for the cold to sink into his bones, for the world to twist and turn on itself. Instead, a raw energy pervaded, and any exhaustion, despite the twisted curls of agony in his chest, seemed to vanquish; renewed, revitalized, confused at it altogether. “Thank you for coming,” was all he could manage at first, uncertain of how to proceed. Did she know? Wouldn’t she? “Amalia’s paralysis,” was where he eventually began, striving to reach past the torturous efforts of describing or imagining the event again. “The healers could not mend her legs. Is there anything else that could be done?” Only then did he lift his eyes back up to her. He'd already set up ramps, a chair waiting in the wings, if the Shield deigned to comply with any of it - pondering, wondering, if this was beyond his means all over again.
It takes dying to know
How to live as ghosts
