“And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry void,
likeness, image of mystery,
felt myself a pure part of the abyss.
I wheeled with the stars.
My heart broke loose on the wind.”
drunk with the great starry void,
likeness, image of mystery,
felt myself a pure part of the abyss.
I wheeled with the stars.
My heart broke loose on the wind.”
Jask is still folding his mouth, as if he is a tablecloth neatly tucked in on itself, and the void is pouring out of him in wave after wave of emptiness as cold as the black space between stars.
They are humming the same song, one that is long and almost sad and frankly boring, hours and hours of droning punctuated by holy silence. When Jask listens he does not hear her music, only the hymn of his quietness, only the wind grinding away each sandstone wall. Jask wonders if she knows her city will be gone in a century, blown back into the dunes that built it. He wonders this like he wonders most things, as if through a fog, some half-remembered question that he never quite thought to ask.
He is mostly half-remembered questions, now. That and the silence. The stillness. As she speaks the wind picks up the edges of his robes and curls them around his ankles. It feels like the hands of god.
It's not for sale, the girl insists with a voice full of dog's teeth, gnashing, and gnashing and gnashing. Jask is still smiling like a stepford wife, all lips and no teeth. Together they are a strange tableau, a frown that is almost a threat and a smile that is not quite a smile. The red of his eyes is bright and still.
He does not care that she is lost in thought, does not care that she is as sharp as her blades, could not care if he tried--and he doesn't. "I know," he says, "you said so." While the statement itself is not exactly kind, the voice that carries it is an almost practiced softness, as if being read from a book.
The smile drops off of Jask's face, an act that looks vaguely mechanical and not at all fluid. "Where do they come from?"
@teiran
