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BY THE PRECEPTS OF HER PURITY
A voice rang beside her and she looked up to find the ivory portrait of the Transcended, gleaming against the golden sands of the Throat. For a moment Maren looked at her in silence, examining the look in the girl's eyes. Perhaps it was her imagination, but she thought she saw that same longing, that quiet, mad need to hollow out her soul, to cope with the grief that pressed the herd with its frailty and loss.
But the words she said were so different than she had expected. She couldn’t decide what to say to her in return. If anything, she would've envisioned words of tragic and sadness, for she would’ve thought Sohalia as a mare that shared her feelings. If anything, Maren would’ve thought her someone who would seek her out to share them — emotions of grief and pain caused by Gaucho's death — with Maren, to find shelter for them, to hide them in the care of the Diviner so that she may be rid of them. But there was none of that. The mare was trying to hide them, dispose of them, like herself, but in the cracks and holes of this temple. For once, Maren didn't mind her duty as Wise One being ignored and overseen. She didn't feel particularly wise today, anyway. Sohalia was probably tired as well, but didn’t care — as well. Thinking this, the tiger mare tried to sound casual.
“Any help is welcome.”
Already knowing who the ivory mare was, she still listened to her introduction carefully, which Maren couldn’t help but find rather thoughtful of her, especially because she was surprised to hear that the mare had taken up the job as artisan. It intrigued her. After all, she had not forgotten that, like Cera, the Transcended was a former Diviner herself.
Maren’s golden gaze traveled around the temple’s building site while she thought about all the things that were left to be done. “I could use a pair of wings to do some work on the tower’s metal foundation and filling up the notches higher up. The seagulls can be annoying, but at least you can catch a breeze there.” She smiled, almost tragically, her voice mirroring the longing she felt for a nice, cold swoop of wind between her ears. She hoped she didn’t sound too dismissive. She could’ve asked Sohalia to help her down here, with the lower ground work, but she could only postpone the hardest part for so long. And, since there was no way her wings would be able to carry her even a few inches higher than she could jump, the Transcended seemed to be the perfect solution. “Only if you want to,” She added carefully, perhaps feeling the water and trying to grasp the thoughts from the look in the girl's eyes. But the tiger mare was still unforgivably horrible when it came down to reading faces. “For the construction we work to create cells with our metal so that we can fill it up with rocks, clay and sand later. See here.”
Maren wandered to a finished wall of the main hall where the metal notches were almost invisible now, completely filled up with orange clay and rocks, except the part where the stained window, made by the World’s Edge crafter, shimmered in the sunlight, throwing its colored patch of light like a confused shadow on the ground before them. She returned her golden eyes back to the Transcended. "What do you think?"
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