who we are and all that we're trying to be
Could loss be avoided? He’d never been able to – perhaps the escape was only temporary. Maybe he wouldn’t be strong enough here either. The apprehension rose unbidden through his lungs again, and he spent multitudes of silence, of moments, ferociously smothering it back down, down, down, where he couldn’t see, couldn’t feel, couldn’t show its edges. Where it poked through his enamel, his armor, his vessel, how a series of abandonments, death, and derision had eaten away at him, swallowed, consumed, devoured until he really wasn’t certain what was left.
So he didn’t argue his point; that he merely had nothing left.
Because maybe it wasn’t quite true any longer, but he didn’t want to give that hope either. It was always too easily crushed.
He nodded at her assertion and thoughts, plausible venues given the circumstances, his unfamiliarity with the area (Halo was not the Aurora Basin, regardless of dreams immersed in sickness). “Understood.” Deimos had done so naturally when it came to the Grounds, because it’d been the only area they’d known for a time – eventually knew the ins and outs, from where he roamed and hunted and wandered. At the very least, he hadn’t lost his spirit for inquiry and curiosity. Halo was relatively unknown, save for the Sea of Glass, ill-begotten caves, and other various ventures.
The Sword watched the Glacier react to the other information he provided – but had little else to extend, given the shadowy convictions, the relative unknown. “Supposedly they are from where the Voice originated.” His gaze met hers, pondering any reaction. “I have nothing else, but I will listen and provide you with what I can find.” Lifetimes ago, he’d been a hoarder of secrets, specious, duplicitous, kept for his sovereign causes, and here, he kept them too – an ear to the ground, a process of finding, discovering, extending, and parsing through nuances.
It takes dying to know
How to live as ghosts
