 | "And we who seek to balance pleasure and pain We blow against the wind and spit against the rain" The music calls to him with increasing insistency. The mare seems to defend the use of poison, which is all the more baffling to him. He wonders if she's a princess or someone of importance, someone whose sudden death would be wanted even at an event of peace, but if she is he doubts she'd say so just because he asked. So he does not ask, he simply wonders. He finds his body swaying subtly with the music, and just when he's about to ask her another question that will undoubtedly offend her, she leaves. Their odd encounter, more a polite argument than a conversation, is over soon after it begins. Eik watches the pied mare leave with an expression that is part confusion and part relief. He feels drained after their bout of misunderstandings, but still the music calls. "Huh," he says to himself, and without thinking much more about it he slips closer to the source of the music he finds himself swaying to. Eik has never danced before, but with the plain white mask to hide his features and the strange drink thick in his blood, he learns. "For what could be more real than sweat and dust and sun? And what more sure than night and death and sleep?" |
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Time makes fools of us all
