Moonspear i’m on the dark side of a hollow hill

Occasionally he was privy to these little snippets—the sort that determined the sum of their parts and implied whether they were whole or not. Occasionally, these same little snippets were the sort that also spun his own being into view, and it was that sort of scrutiny, however self-inflicted, that Dirge found he did not enjoy.

In this case, the revelation to him was just how immature Arcturus was on matters that came more naturally to Dirge, and the caveat in the footnotes also told him just how much Arcturus was turning him for a guidance that he was ill-equip to give. But who better to go to than a confident creature who seemed to have it all together? He wondered if for a moment he was being imprinted upon, if he seemed that fatherly before all else, but ultimately recoiled at the fact that Arcturus had skillfully, unknowingly probed too close to something Dirge did not have full confidence in.

And he couldn't have begun to explain to Arcturus that what he had was not at all that simple; it was complicated, one-sidedly so, and Dirge had long passed through his confidence of the known for favor of simply fabricating reality until it winked into existence and could be grasped. In the silence that surely burned his younger counterpart, he let go of a sigh and found a thin smile he could have stolen from a charlatan. No, there was nothing about the territory he was in socially, politically, or otherwise that was confident for himself. But at least it looked that way.

That was all that mattered, he decided.

"Then you will find a woman who captures your attention like no other," he stated, only beginning. "And you will learn what it means to carry a passion and a lust that is not so easily fulfilled by another. She will complicate every plan you think you have, she will relentlessly pick at you and tease, and yet welcome you with familiarity every time you see her. It will be those little things that permeate your thoughts until you can no longer see another way, nor will you want to."