A Dark Thought
It’s still early in the semester.
Still cold and dark and lifeless.
But when I put my hands to the earth, I can tell that it is sleeping.
I know that part of what I’m supposed to be learning is how this realm works, but I can’t stop wondering why it should.
Why do we care? Why should I care?
What is it about the mortal realm that makes it worth abiding by?
Why would anyone want to maintain a realm that is so understimulating the plants fall asleep?
It doesn’t make sense.
And I’m supposed to stay here? If I could never go home, just to visit…
If I didn’t have my ways to peer beyond the veil?
I’d end it.
I understand, being here, why we’re so protective of the veil. It’s not to protect the mortals from us. It’s to protect the vibrancy of our realm from them.
The sun rises like a hazy golden dish and I almost want to weep.
Did they do this? Did their technology and wars and guns frighten Sol into a pallid representation of her true self?
And the stars - mere ghosts of the fires beyond the veil. It’s as though this world has a glamour on it, but that the glamour is designed to make mortals lazy and accepting.
So easy to please.
Isaac for example. I don’t know a great deal, but his contentment in the belief that to rule is a valid and worthy goal…
I’m a bit less afraid of him than he thinks I should be. There are few people who could think as highly of him as he does. And the chain around his neck does nothing but sap the colour from him -
as though it wishes to eat his soul.
Mortals are far too free with so valuable a commodity.
Arden understands the value - but he wants to do nothing except hoard. Hoard and keep to herself. Wyrmkin have spent too long in this realm…they’re assimilating. Softening. Give them what they desire and they’ll curl up contented as a kitten by the fire.
And then there’s the sweet stray kitten who seems to have had the misfortune to be stuck between the flames and the ice. The truest, most basic of mortals. Her soul has a…haze to it.
I’m not sure yet, whether I want to taste it or run from it.
That’s not right.
What Professor Grey said in class stuck with me. The huntings, the stakes, the agony of iron. Take my hands and feet and voice from me and what is left to live?
The life worth living… we so rarely end our lives - a conscious choice. We don’t breed like humans. That would lead to chaos. We don’t die like them, either. Chaos again. No, if home is anything, it is intentional. It makes sense.
What agony must we be in to say “no more”? For all their fragility, at least that moment of absolute conscious finality is not in their control. They often lose awareness so far before death that such an inquisition technique was almost certainly for fae.
Fae and freaks, I suppose.
I don’t know why Neal was so shaken - I simply want to know more. I’ve barely been to the library before today.
I think I should like some hellhounds. Ghosts would be fun, but there’s so much unresolved…and once their shit’s resolved, they leave, right?
Hellhounds wish to protect. I am more than happy to be protected. And it would be very nice to have a friend to protect me.
The way Professor Grey spoke, she seemed to think the realm is safe.
Is it? Or have the monsters not found us yet?
