And Descartes, the first to admit
he supposed a body to be nothing
but a machine made of earth. Mere clockwork.
He found this a comfort because
you can always wind a machine back up.
he supposed a body to be nothing
but a machine made of earth. Mere clockwork.
He found this a comfort because
you can always wind a machine back up.
Light hoofsteps follow him into the false-shrine, and he turns, quick like a startled adder but freezes at the stranger’s words.
He had jewels on his antlers and in his eyes, pale and scarred, something of a mirror image gone wrong. Toro said, ”No.” He is coarse as new sand and bristled as a boar, that private thought thrown into the open for him to deny. The thought of death made him feel sick. He didn’t want it. That was why he turned away, because it made him ill, because it was wrong, because if he hadn’t thought about it in the first place, he wouldn’t be feeling like this, wouldn’t be caught with his back to a not-shrine, would-be could-be death talk in the air. Truth be told, he was not an adder, or a boar, or coarse new sand. He was a frightened deer, a doe, even, and though he wouldn’t deign to call this one a stag, the stranger had managed to unnerve Toro with a single sentence. It was a power he did not like others to have. ”You must think about it often enough,” he said, words like dull gravel, not enough heart in them to sound sharp. He tried his best to deflect.
@
"What I say,"
What I think,
