and let me kick you off a bungee

I have left the Throat behind me for now, let it sink back, out of sight, out of mind. I do not let it bother me that at home (can I call it home? When I feel so out of place, so lost among familiar sands?) my family is happy, they are healthy and powerful and threatening. And I? I am nothing, nichts, niente. The words have fallen from their mouths over and over as they mock me, amber eyes hanging over me as it is not my mother who is there, looking at me bewildered and afraid, but them. Two separate beings, taunting me as I face the world alone, silenced by my inability to claim I am better than they say, better than everything they'll ever be. So I remain crumbling, collapsing as they spit hate that burns through my skin and poisons my insides.

Who will tell them that I am but a child, an innocent life that they have crushed, whose hate and disdain for the ugly, the unholy, the impure, has left a bitter taste at the back of my throat. I am convulsing, heaving within the hold of the Marsh, where the air is cool and clean but swarming around me is the resentment of a thousand generations, eras swept away by harmful forces and hate consuming me entirely. "Kísértet, meglazít," I whisper to them, the ghastly figures that cling to the surface of the water, the bark of the trees, that tangle themselves into the roots beneath my hooves. I know they are there, cool blue bodies swirling magnificently against the cold Orangemoon landscape, fading in and out of existence as they find their way through the world, navigating better than I ever could.

And then there is nothing at all, my wandering has led me to an open clearing where they all go silent, where the anxious drifting souls have hushed and wavered. They stand at the edge of where I now stand, silent howling echoing through my head as I approach the center of the space they dare not touch. Ott!

My pace is faster, I am rapidly approaching a tower of warm, burning oranges and reds, power radiates from it, strong and dominating. I begin to understand why the dull blue figures gather so close to the edges of the clearing, why they refuse to step farther into the domain of this. "Wer bist du? Was bist du?" Hollow eyes are drawing out the rough shape of the stone before me, the cool but warm red surface. What lingers here, something that scares the astral figures from straying beyond their own territory. Looking to their mass of brewing blue bodies, I look back to the altar with a quiet but firm question, curious but cautious as to what lies beyond this stone. "Miért félnek?"