Silence became her but by another's tongue, pulling the knitted brows of disdain apart as the veil of stubbornness was drawn for reason. Her loneliness... her isolation and monster? The ideal was unfathomable, though not absurd. Was not the role of a monster, a demon, to plague the living and prey upon the weakness they sought to conceal? Only had she ever looked to her isolation as a blessing, yet what had it brought her other that the perpetual silence and the cold of the winter wind? But was that not what she wanted? Was that not what compelled her to leave the Spire in the first place?
A wanderer knew not the regret of their actions. Such as a luxury for the established able to allow their minds to ponder their mistakes. Time was their companion when not spent on the foraging life. Their days softened by routine and the comfort of stability that they pry into their pasts to surface means of amusement. Such was not a commodity for her to indulge. But how it glimmered in complement to his words... luring her.
The gleam of a single eye held her gaze, drawing the mind from itself into the depths of hellish fire. She remained fixed upon him, pushing herself to stand by creaking limbs as he too rose. Her body was still, only stirred by the wintry gust of the mountains. Their whispers of a cold, clouded night tickling her ears.
He spoke so easily of monsters as if he had lived along them. As if he knew of them and they were a part of him. She knew nothing beyond what she had seen, what she had endured in her own keep. But the horror beyond the single eye conveyed that it beheld much more than what her mind could perceive. Dare she take his word as gospel.
And still she watched even as his rugged back was brandished in dismissal. His words still ringing even after the hellish tones were silenced by distance and wind. Still, she listened. And her ears remained erect long after the visage of the male was gone, and she turned from his path back toward her own... leading nowhere and everywhere. To the realm where monsters lurked in their silence.
[Exit Xi'nuata] |