Into this wild Abyss/ The womb of Nature, and perhaps her grave--/ Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,/ But all these in their pregnant causes mixed/ Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight,/ Unless the Almighty Maker them ordain/ His dark materials to create more worlds,--/ Into this wild Abyss the wary Fiend/ Stood on the brink of Hell and looked a while,/ Pondering his voyage; for no narrow frith/ He had to cross
Why would it, when it cares not for us?
The question takes him by surprise. It is the question he has asked himself many times. It is the thing he had stayed awake wondering, when he should have been dealing with matters of his Court. There is no part of him prepared to defend against his own inner monologue turned back at him; he is not prepared to answer the question that keeps him restless, keeps him hungry. So at first he says nothing. At first he looks down at her, expression hard, as if with something like pity—or disgust—or the two combined.
It is her grief, he decides, that makes him so uncomfortable. It is the way he cannot answer with any truth, with any honesty. At last he says, “She cares, just not in the ways we want her to, or the ways that we can understand.” Orestes does not know why the words emerge defensive, but they do. Orestes does not know why he cannot look her in the eyes, but he can't.
Something nags at him. The same feeling returns: a song he cannot remember the words to, a song without rhythm, only the memory, only the knowledge that he should know it and somehow does not. Orestes swallows. He discovers it is quite difficult to look at her, anything about her at all, and he steps away, so he is facing not the stranger but the horizon, one hoof stretching haphazardly forward to dip into the sea.
