Without his coo mask, the elder looked somehow smaller, drained of a bit of his mystique - but the witch doctor would never say as much. It humanized him, made him more accessible to her, as she imagined she might be if she ever decided to doff her own attire.
Which she wouldn't. Turhan needn't look beneath the mask to see her for who she was, and her eyes were for Vespera alone.
An aftershock shuddered through the roots of the mountain, shifting the rubble further as the elder cursed his nakedness to anyone and anything that would listen. The witch doctor only half-heard him, behind more sharply inclined to action than epithets and too tired anyway to squander energy that she wasn't planning on using toward nobler ventures.
Vespera, awake you tink?
This caught her attention, in part for the mention of her goddess and in part because it was the first conversational thing that Turhan had said since discovering his face was gone. The mouse-colored mare paused for a moment to consider a reply and kept digging as she spoke.
"Vespel been wake," she replied portentously, knowing that the elder would understand. For the Ilati, Vespera had never fallen silent at all. Her voice seeped through the growth of new bark over a wounded tree, nestled in the sigh of daylight sinking down into night. She whispered for those attentive enough to hear in the change of the seasons and on the wings of newly-fledged birds. Perhaps the Interlopers in their stone towers playing their queer political games and throwing their gilded parties could not hear her speak, but one could not lay that at the goddess's feet. "Now she jus be mad."
A large, flat stone that the spotted mare had been forcing gave way after a final mighty shove, clattering down the rubble-strewn slope. Beneath it, protected from the slide by the stone's shielding presence, lay the lost mask, dusty but intact. "Ho!" She hefted the article, her raspy voice almost aggressively self-congratulatory. "Me find. Here." Not quite waiting for the elder to fully look her way, she put the mask back over his face and automatically set to with the task of braiding it back into place. It was something she'd done a hundred times; she could probably have done it in her sleep.
As she worked, her voice softened - as much as it could, anyway. "What do if Vespela be mad, Kenkéknem?"
The Witch Doctor
The first records of our young world were those of tears and blood;
its last records will be those of tears and blood also.
Which she wouldn't. Turhan needn't look beneath the mask to see her for who she was, and her eyes were for Vespera alone.
An aftershock shuddered through the roots of the mountain, shifting the rubble further as the elder cursed his nakedness to anyone and anything that would listen. The witch doctor only half-heard him, behind more sharply inclined to action than epithets and too tired anyway to squander energy that she wasn't planning on using toward nobler ventures.
Vespera, awake you tink?
This caught her attention, in part for the mention of her goddess and in part because it was the first conversational thing that Turhan had said since discovering his face was gone. The mouse-colored mare paused for a moment to consider a reply and kept digging as she spoke.
"Vespel been wake," she replied portentously, knowing that the elder would understand. For the Ilati, Vespera had never fallen silent at all. Her voice seeped through the growth of new bark over a wounded tree, nestled in the sigh of daylight sinking down into night. She whispered for those attentive enough to hear in the change of the seasons and on the wings of newly-fledged birds. Perhaps the Interlopers in their stone towers playing their queer political games and throwing their gilded parties could not hear her speak, but one could not lay that at the goddess's feet. "Now she jus be mad."
A large, flat stone that the spotted mare had been forcing gave way after a final mighty shove, clattering down the rubble-strewn slope. Beneath it, protected from the slide by the stone's shielding presence, lay the lost mask, dusty but intact. "Ho!" She hefted the article, her raspy voice almost aggressively self-congratulatory. "Me find. Here." Not quite waiting for the elder to fully look her way, she put the mask back over his face and automatically set to with the task of braiding it back into place. It was something she'd done a hundred times; she could probably have done it in her sleep.
As she worked, her voice softened - as much as it could, anyway. "What do if Vespela be mad, Kenkéknem?"
The Witch Doctor
The first records of our young world were those of tears and blood;
its last records will be those of tears and blood also.
@Turhan
