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BY THE PRECEPTS OF HER PURITY
”What happens when you return? When you’re no longer lost?”
She blinked her long white lashes, frowned at him, decided that she did not really feel the commitment in his question. She wondered if he was truly trying to understand, or if he was just laughing at her, behind those… those... — Then again ... his eyes; his stare was so intense, so eager, that even she could feel the energy surging through them. Was he planning to get lost? Not just lost.... But truly lost. Was he planning to, but scared that he wouldn’t be able to find himself again afterwards?
She thought that maybe Erebos was confused. Or maybe he really was a simpleton, but that idea didn’t click with the way he looked and asked questions. She thought him too intriguing, possibly too bright.
“Then you are no longer lost.” She heard herself say with a sensible obviousness to her tone that she may or may not had let slip through accidentally. Had he expected some bittersweet, thrilling, magical - or even spiritual, explanation? Had he expected to hear the deepest secrets of the world — all the blessed and all the doomed to come?
Yet, his eyes were no longer on her and she felt strange about it. Why had he looked away in the first place? She wanted him to seek eye contact with her again, for otherwise it would just be... rude? Wasn’t that how she felt? Because there was something else too, that made her doubt herself. Maybe it was the cold ring in her static bones as she did not dare move her frozen legs an inch, feeling like that would trigger something that would make him walk away.
Then again, what she said wasn’t really true, was it? ”...Enlightenment,” she added, though a second later; it was just different wording of the same, yet as if it were a better one, a proper explanation — hoping that with this she would be giving him enough reason to stay.
She could of course waste more words on him, tell him more (just more). Silly, stupid things. That if he would stay lost for too long, he could go mad. That she might’ve come here to get lost, but that she didn’t have the luxury to go mad yet. That she had still lots and lots more to do still. That it would only be counterproductive. She wanted to laugh — No, she didn’t. She wanted him to laugh. Because she was already being counterproductive, illogical, idiotic, because even getting lost for that moment that she was; it was stupid of her. She hadn’t had the time. And yet, she wanted to tell him, so that he would laugh again, maybe. Silly… and counterproductive as well.
She once again felt his dark gaze on her own — her own silent, golden stare, but behind it excitement ran like the bang of a gunshot through her veins, as his attention was back on her. By now her frown had lifted and she was simply listening to his questioning voice, the rolling of his tongue in that same attractive hum. (Why though?) There came a strange kind of satisfaction — and relief, he hadn’t ran yet — when he asked that other question. “The God of the Sun is the Dragon’s Throat’s Patron, so He is the only one with whom I speak,” she said at first, although she was sure he should at least know that much. She took a pause, as to overthink what she already knew. Of course she could tell him that it was like any other conversation, that it was like speaking to a friend, as easy as the transition of getting lost and no longer being lost — except it wasn’t really. To talk to her God, the one that was the soil to her religion, her existence? But being His messenger, His seer, was a silent reward, the grand prize few were aware of existed — perhaps a burden hardly any realized was worth to carry; lithe as the air she breathed, heavy as the mountains. It made her feel small, unimportant — How could she look into His eyes, how could she stand before Him without being an annoyance (What did she really differ from a fly in the eyes of a God)? How it was, to speak with Him, ask Him questions?
She knew that, above all else, it made her feel powerful.
“How it is... I am afraid that its value is too vast to understand by simply putting it in words.” Another puff of fog left the frames of her nostrils. “It has that kind of value that goes unnoticed easily, or is just underestimated by those unknowing... ignorant... hasty.” She glanced at him from under her lashes, perhaps let through a sparkle of possible intrigue, reflections of wondering, questioning light. She knew this would be the time to put a period behind this subject, to finally ask him what kind of place the Aurora Basin was, as she had wanted moments before. But she couldn’t, she wanted to know other things now; if he was none of those things she had mentioned (unknowing, ignorant, hasty) and if so, what he was instead. “Erebos, how do you see the world?”
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