you have heard the stories about how the dead have already cried, like crushed grass and wilted flowers and memories carved into stone, then forgotten.
Teiran is correct, but only partly.
Everything about Jask is meant to be unsettling--and this is perhaps the aim of the Circle, the more he thinks about it. At a young age, Jask understood that he is to fear himself so that the world might fear him in turn. He is not a man, or an object, he is a symbol. All of them are symbols.
The question has always been: a symbol of what?
What might be. What has already come to pass. The voice in the dark that says you must hate what you cannot control, you must fear what you cannot understand. When he thinks of himself all he knows is fear. When he thinks of the world all he knows is hatred. Hatred and scorn and disgust, blurred by the eye on the shelf of his brow, the one that might have seen beautiful things if it had been allowed to see at all.
Beautiful, terrible things.
This eye, the each red one, do not move from her face. Jask is still like a spider, still like a thing in waiting, still, and still, and still, until he draws his breath to speak.
"I am sorry for your loss." he says, because Jask thinks this is what is expected of him - to bow his head and close his eyes and say a silent prayer for a monster with a name like hot iron, the shape of her bad dreams. And when he opens his eyes again, and they center back on her face, as if they had never left, there is no glint of recognition in his eyes. Her pain is nothing more to him than a prompt to respond.
Teiran continues: where do you come from? and Jask answers plainly, if with a hint of pride: "Far away from here, across the sea, at the very least. I come from a land plagued by magic, unbelievable as it may seem." He pauses for a moment, face set in grim, rough lines. "Count your blessings that yours is not."
Jask does not smile again. The face of her collar glints like a sword in the desert sun. Jask's feels warm against him, the black leather baked and nestled beneath the curve of his jaw -- and so they stand, warrior to warrior, slave to slave, except one does not know what they are.
jask
Everything about Jask is meant to be unsettling--and this is perhaps the aim of the Circle, the more he thinks about it. At a young age, Jask understood that he is to fear himself so that the world might fear him in turn. He is not a man, or an object, he is a symbol. All of them are symbols.
The question has always been: a symbol of what?
What might be. What has already come to pass. The voice in the dark that says you must hate what you cannot control, you must fear what you cannot understand. When he thinks of himself all he knows is fear. When he thinks of the world all he knows is hatred. Hatred and scorn and disgust, blurred by the eye on the shelf of his brow, the one that might have seen beautiful things if it had been allowed to see at all.
Beautiful, terrible things.
This eye, the each red one, do not move from her face. Jask is still like a spider, still like a thing in waiting, still, and still, and still, until he draws his breath to speak.
"I am sorry for your loss." he says, because Jask thinks this is what is expected of him - to bow his head and close his eyes and say a silent prayer for a monster with a name like hot iron, the shape of her bad dreams. And when he opens his eyes again, and they center back on her face, as if they had never left, there is no glint of recognition in his eyes. Her pain is nothing more to him than a prompt to respond.
Teiran continues: where do you come from? and Jask answers plainly, if with a hint of pride: "Far away from here, across the sea, at the very least. I come from a land plagued by magic, unbelievable as it may seem." He pauses for a moment, face set in grim, rough lines. "Count your blessings that yours is not."
Jask does not smile again. The face of her collar glints like a sword in the desert sun. Jask's feels warm against him, the black leather baked and nestled beneath the curve of his jaw -- and so they stand, warrior to warrior, slave to slave, except one does not know what they are.
