They sit not a foot apart, with apocalyptic blackness stretching between and all around them. Vi’s deep, dark eyes do not leave Amalia’s even for a moment, listening, weighing her words for their truth or their emptiness. This small woman with a cosmos of conviction, with a molten core of passion that burns bright, that may burn too bright if it is not tempered.
”Life is dangerous,” the deity says softly, his voice echoing not against the wall of shadows that blanket them. ”Life begets death, which begets life again in turn. Creatures die. They are killed, sometimes cruelly. To stand against it - to wish to save, to protect - is a curious folly of mortal kind. A folly that Safrin, too, has picked up in her time.”
The smile is there now, beneath the earthen beard budding with autumnal flowers. ”To choose that folly is to walk the same line as those who would also do the work of Death. It is a fine line - one easily crossed. It is easy to murder in the belief that one is protecting others. It is easy to end lives under the pretence of preserving life itself. Are you one who might cross that line?”
”Life is dangerous,” the deity says softly, his voice echoing not against the wall of shadows that blanket them. ”Life begets death, which begets life again in turn. Creatures die. They are killed, sometimes cruelly. To stand against it - to wish to save, to protect - is a curious folly of mortal kind. A folly that Safrin, too, has picked up in her time.”
The smile is there now, beneath the earthen beard budding with autumnal flowers. ”To choose that folly is to walk the same line as those who would also do the work of Death. It is a fine line - one easily crossed. It is easy to murder in the belief that one is protecting others. It is easy to end lives under the pretence of preserving life itself. Are you one who might cross that line?”
VI
