who we are and all that we're trying to be
The world was overwhelming. Perhaps that was why Deimos had started drinking the moment he’d entered. But from staggering ignorance came experience, immersing and wandering into the thresholds, into repairing buildings, into fountains of knowledge, interloping, connecting, parsing parts of scruples together until he thought he knew was what he was doing. The ability to adapt and assimilate was crucial in these parts, where one moment differed from all the rest, or another instance was a reflection of the first, and they came together in a revolving void or precipice. Chulane would learn, as the rest of them had, through trial, error, mistake after mistake, savoring the seconds not spread into absolute bewilderment, and then settle into the acrimony, the hostility, the constant unknown. It would become normal.
But sitting before the bakery only instigated potential of guiding fixtures and figures. A sanctum, a sanctuary, a refuge with more than just scones and bread, and he tilted his head, nearly a mirror image of the feline. If the lightest of smiles pressed into his hound features, he let it remain, piercing eyes sliding over the familiar edges of faded signs (a note of repainting in the back of his mind, when the realm ceased its antipathy long enough), of lantern lights, of lavender sprigs and plumes long since buried beneath crackled, embittered leaves.
The question almost made him laugh. For all his understandings of the nuances along the Grounds, there weren’t any priestesses – but certainly Amalia would’ve been amongst and amidst the most devout. No came first, and then the rest sauntered within. She is the Shield of Safrin. A guard, a tether, a line, to stars and cosmos, to strength, conviction, oaths, and assurances. She was more than that too – but he only permitted the latter to linger amidst the bonds.
Then, when he thought the leopard was ready, he shifted to leave, to trace over other familiar paths.
It takes dying to know
How to live as ghosts
