he was a victim of the of the part that loved, the part that was mortal
I can feel every emotion that courses through you.
Perhaps if she had been successful in her aims, I might have registered then what she meant. As it is, I do not understand; she simply sounds empathetic to me, a man unversed in nonmaterial magics. The experience, combined, is too much. I cannot at once understand her confession and the touch she shared.
I do not know why Damascus had taken us here, of all places. I do not know why Damascus would take us here and not elsewhere; not to the woods, or the sea, or one of the cities. I do not know how he knew this was where she lived, or—
There are many things, it seems, that I do not know.
Her breath catches in her throat (and how does that, briefly, remind me of Cillian? How does the kindness of her gesture make me remember a woman who gave her everything just to try and salvage my fragments?)
Your creature. I say nothing. Perhaps because there is nothing to say, to describe what he is to me, or to explain what he did to us. I do not know if we were saved or condemned by his magic; if he meant to help, or harm, or like me a combination of both, always.
There is something in her, then, that I had been looking past; she looks shaken, or in pain. Once, I would have noticed this immediately; instead it had taken me valuable seconds. I would not have thought Damascus would have hurt her—
I told you, Torix. I can feel every one of your emotions. So tell me the story behind them.
It becomes clear, then, that I am the source of her pain. She stands while I remain on the floor; and now I am looking up and she down.
“I don’t understand,” I begin. And then I prepare my lie—
(But beneath my eyes dance Damascus’s yellow smoke; but beneath my eyes I see now the threads that weave it, the magic of delusions, of truth, of fantasy. They are all interconnected and separate, and I stutter out something nonsensical, because I cannot lie).
Not in the wake of my own dragon’s curse.
I clear my throat. I might not have spoken at all, if not for the way she regards me so fiercely.
“There is someone I hurt.” I say. My voice is too stiff. My voice does not sound like my own. “But they hurt me, first.” I am aware of the childish, clipped nature of my words. But the confession does not want to emerge—it might not have, if I had not had my mind full of these memories before awakening. “I thought our betrayals were equal. But revenge never is.”
I look away from her; and still, I do not rise. I am speaking to my own scars, notched in my legs, when I say: “I came to Novus to find her, I suppose. I knew I could not go on pretending the betrayal had never happened. I came to kill her, for closure, I think. But since I have been here, I have not been able to do it. It has transformed from that kind of closure to—to regret.”
Regret. It is the first time I have said the word aloud, even as it roils within me, as turbulent as a storm. Even as it devours me from within, as insidious as demons, as darkness.
“She was the only person I have ever loved. And I will never be able to fix it, and so—I find it easier to… hate everything. The whole world.”
And that, perhaps, is the emotion she is feeling.
That, is perhaps, the truth I have been made to speak.
I cannot help the way, then, that I laugh humorlessly. I raise my eyes to regard her at last; and then I rise to my feet, unsteadily. "I told her, when we were children, before the lies and our betrayals... I told her that love and hate are not so different. I had once been a man filled with love of country, with esprit de corps, with brotherhood. I had once been full of love of duty. With love of my companion. And now, I am only full of hate and anger and distrust. The two are not so different, in that they have both encompassed all that I am."
Perhaps if she had been successful in her aims, I might have registered then what she meant. As it is, I do not understand; she simply sounds empathetic to me, a man unversed in nonmaterial magics. The experience, combined, is too much. I cannot at once understand her confession and the touch she shared.
I do not know why Damascus had taken us here, of all places. I do not know why Damascus would take us here and not elsewhere; not to the woods, or the sea, or one of the cities. I do not know how he knew this was where she lived, or—
There are many things, it seems, that I do not know.
Her breath catches in her throat (and how does that, briefly, remind me of Cillian? How does the kindness of her gesture make me remember a woman who gave her everything just to try and salvage my fragments?)
Your creature. I say nothing. Perhaps because there is nothing to say, to describe what he is to me, or to explain what he did to us. I do not know if we were saved or condemned by his magic; if he meant to help, or harm, or like me a combination of both, always.
There is something in her, then, that I had been looking past; she looks shaken, or in pain. Once, I would have noticed this immediately; instead it had taken me valuable seconds. I would not have thought Damascus would have hurt her—
I told you, Torix. I can feel every one of your emotions. So tell me the story behind them.
It becomes clear, then, that I am the source of her pain. She stands while I remain on the floor; and now I am looking up and she down.
“I don’t understand,” I begin. And then I prepare my lie—
(But beneath my eyes dance Damascus’s yellow smoke; but beneath my eyes I see now the threads that weave it, the magic of delusions, of truth, of fantasy. They are all interconnected and separate, and I stutter out something nonsensical, because I cannot lie).
Not in the wake of my own dragon’s curse.
I clear my throat. I might not have spoken at all, if not for the way she regards me so fiercely.
“There is someone I hurt.” I say. My voice is too stiff. My voice does not sound like my own. “But they hurt me, first.” I am aware of the childish, clipped nature of my words. But the confession does not want to emerge—it might not have, if I had not had my mind full of these memories before awakening. “I thought our betrayals were equal. But revenge never is.”
I look away from her; and still, I do not rise. I am speaking to my own scars, notched in my legs, when I say: “I came to Novus to find her, I suppose. I knew I could not go on pretending the betrayal had never happened. I came to kill her, for closure, I think. But since I have been here, I have not been able to do it. It has transformed from that kind of closure to—to regret.”
Regret. It is the first time I have said the word aloud, even as it roils within me, as turbulent as a storm. Even as it devours me from within, as insidious as demons, as darkness.
“She was the only person I have ever loved. And I will never be able to fix it, and so—I find it easier to… hate everything. The whole world.”
And that, perhaps, is the emotion she is feeling.
That, is perhaps, the truth I have been made to speak.
I cannot help the way, then, that I laugh humorlessly. I raise my eyes to regard her at last; and then I rise to my feet, unsteadily. "I told her, when we were children, before the lies and our betrayals... I told her that love and hate are not so different. I had once been a man filled with love of country, with esprit de corps, with brotherhood. I had once been full of love of duty. With love of my companion. And now, I am only full of hate and anger and distrust. The two are not so different, in that they have both encompassed all that I am."
