I HOPE YOU WILL TAKE IT, AND REMEMBER ON EARTH
I did not know how to touch it it was all so raw, / and if by chance there is no edge to the crowd / or anything else so that I am of it, / I will take the orange and toss it as high as I can.
Does he look a bit – strange? There is something to his movements, to his gestures that I surely didn’t see a moment ago. Perhaps it is simply fatigue. He has likely been working the entire evening, after all, like all the other uniformed people I’ve seen wandering the mansion during my - rather clumsy - exploration.
Have you ever in your life told a lie? There is a laugh in his voice, but I don’t mind it. I think that I’ve been a bit tactless, lately, and more open than I remember being in my past lifetimes – the shift seems to have happened when I came to Novus. I think that it’s a matter of reliance. Back home, I was almost entirely self-reliant; here, I find myself all the time relying on the kindness of strangers. It’s a bit uncomfortable, and I’m still not sure that I like it (I am always begging to be useful, not the one using), but I think that it’s been good to learn from outsiders, regardless.
I’m not usually this blunt, though.
“Well – yes,” I admit, nodding. I can’t think of many times that I’ve lied recently, but I know that I’ve lied before, though I like to hope that my lies were mostly good-intentioned. (Some of them were cruel anyways, I think. Reassurances before every patrol, before each battle – promises I couldn’t really make. They weren’t lies, exactly, not at the time, but they became them when I was dead.) I don’t recite as many lies as I can remember, though I feel the strange urge to do so. Instead, I add, “I’m feeling more honest than usual, though. Maybe it’s the alcohol?” I don’t think I’ve drunk enough for that, but, then, I haven’t drunk much with this body in general, and I don’t know what they’ve put in these drinks at all.
(The idea of the beverages being enchanted (or else mixed with some strange potions) doesn’t even cross my mind. Back home, only the priestesses and the current ruler could use magic – and none of their powers involved making unusual drinks.)
He takes my compliment, though only after an inordinately long stretch of silence; he doesn’t seem to know exactly what to do with it. It’s a bit endearing, and it nearly makes me laugh again, but I swallow it down. (I’m not sure that it would be polite- and, my, is his brow beginning to look sweaty? Perhaps it is the heat, and the lights, or perhaps I just didn’t notice it before.) He tells me that I look nice, too, and I flash him a soft, toothless smile.
“Thank you,” I say. He adds that I don’t look like anything he’s ever seen before, and I wonder what he means by it – though, to be honest, I didn’t much look like anything I’d ever seen before, either, when I looked into my reflection for the first time while knowing what I’d looked like in the past. I was so plain, in my other two lives. Now, I think I’m far from it. (It is probably because the priestesses pulled me back; it is probably because of the same destiny that marks my brow with an oak leaf, but that is beside the point.)
He asks me for my name.
“I’m Nicnevin,” I say, offering it up without a shred of hesitation, and begin to ask for his in kind. “What’s your-“ I am halfway through my question when his expression turns painful. I react on impulse, one wing snapping out to brush his shoulder to support him if he starts to fall. I eye him worriedly, my lips twisting into something of a nervous frown, and I change my question to, “Are you alright?”
(I hope that he is.)
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"Speech!"
EVERYTHING IS RISK, SHE WHISPERED.if you doubt, it becomes sand trickling through skeletal fingers.☙❧please tag Nic! contact is encouraged, short of violence
