chaele
worship like a dog
Honesty gnaws at them both like some strange spirit’s curse. But more likely the cause is something more mundane: the anonymity of strangerhood, the as yet secret of their chance meeting, the notion that there could be no world outside of this moment.
“It is my ambition to slay a predator of suitable size,” she replies, a version of wistfulness landing in her tone like a stone in mud. “A wolf, perhaps.” The problem is likely not with the animal itself, but rather with its inevitable companions. It tends also to be the problem with people.
Only after she speaks does she consider the worth of her trust, and the danger of the things she does not know. His words are like riddles, parts of a whole to which Chaele gives a few moments of quiet thought. What does one wake from? Sleep, solitude, ignorance, death. What prevents one from leaving? The more answers he gives the more questions she has, though she has little right to any of them.
“Your companions,” she muses, failing to consider the soul-bound creatures that might wander in his absence. Instead her gaze flits in the settlement’s direction, toward the sides that have been taken in a rising conflict. A tense fingernail pries at the bed of another. “In the Ground?”
“It is my ambition to slay a predator of suitable size,” she replies, a version of wistfulness landing in her tone like a stone in mud. “A wolf, perhaps.” The problem is likely not with the animal itself, but rather with its inevitable companions. It tends also to be the problem with people.
Only after she speaks does she consider the worth of her trust, and the danger of the things she does not know. His words are like riddles, parts of a whole to which Chaele gives a few moments of quiet thought. What does one wake from? Sleep, solitude, ignorance, death. What prevents one from leaving? The more answers he gives the more questions she has, though she has little right to any of them.
“Your companions,” she muses, failing to consider the soul-bound creatures that might wander in his absence. Instead her gaze flits in the settlement’s direction, toward the sides that have been taken in a rising conflict. A tense fingernail pries at the bed of another. “In the Ground?”
at the shrine of my lies
