who we are and all that we're trying to be
This was another reason Deimos frequently kept his mouth shut. Anything tainted and tinted in ferocity, in savage ruthlessness, was better exchanged within actions, mettle, and ruin; other notions were often cultivated, mulled, and mused over, even when he wanted to fray apart. But the rest of the world didn’t handle things in the same way, and so he was forced to regard these notions in the back of his mind, all the scalding, broken, embittered entanglements – when he’d always known he wasn’t enough, when Safrin had told him he wasn’t worthy, and when apparently he was an unsettled, doubtful plunge in the Shield’s life. So he clenched his jaw once more, and simply nodded, accepting Adam’s intentions behind it all, but incapable of letting them go.
Out of the corner of his predatory eyes, feline adornments, he noted Adam’s shift – snakes and serpents, half-inclined to wonder if he’d met Jigano in such a form. That brought back a multitude of rancorous efforts – like the Spire’s basement – but he could permit that one to slink away.
His movements were stalking and ravenous, meant for hunting, meant for chasing, meant for annihilating, not much different from his human strides, ears twitching back and forth, picking up on the motions of serpentine undulations. The beast followed, occasionally pawing at the undergrowth, maneuvering aside brush, leaves, and various pulses of debris, nares also picking upon something long since deceased. Adam’s attempts at conversation were commendable, and since they had nothing to do with Amalia and all the other weights he bore across his shoulders, he chiseled some response to it. Yes. A pause, wondering if it would irritate the snake to simply simmer in more foreboding silence for a while. Jigano and I trained as birds, and used little bits of glass meant to represent the sun. It likely sounded a little convoluted, but if a tiger were capable of shrugging, he would have. We tried to tug them off of one another in aerial combat. While he maneuvered further, nose to the ground, he proffered it in return. Have you?
It takes dying to know
How to live as ghosts
