Your childhood is spent in brightness, surrounded by white flowers and hymns, and not a shadow is ever allowed fall on you, nor a sorrow, nor a scar; even when your mother discovers you playing with two pieces of cutlery – you have decided, in the way of children, that one is a bold guardsman, the other a monster from the terrible lands outside the gates – you are not punished, but gently corrected: it is dangerous, my young one, to go making games of what is not.
.
Fear dreams, the priests of Mihir say, fear snakes, fear smoke, fear the dark, but when ships make port here, they let the Taamas through, carrying their salt-scent and darkness with them; you watch the zailors in the streets sometimes, clustered close and speaking low, and it is blasphemy, but when you see those faces scarred by salt, marked by hunger, you cannot stop yourself from wondering – what dangers shaped them so, and what brought them here to safety, and what terrors (what marvels) might they have seen in the fallen world beyond the light?
.
The Taamas captain’s voice is rough, but when she speaks, it takes on a rhythm like song, and what she speaks of – it isn’t real, it never was, but even as you shiver at the wrongness, you hear truth beneath the lies, like light on the edge of shadow on the edge of light; you listen to her tale, the rise and fall of it like waves in darkness, and as those waves submerge you, every story you never told comes spinning back, and you are changed.
no subject
.
Fear dreams, the priests of Mihir say, fear snakes, fear smoke, fear the dark, but when ships make port here, they let the Taamas through, carrying their salt-scent and darkness with them; you watch the zailors in the streets sometimes, clustered close and speaking low, and it is blasphemy, but when you see those faces scarred by salt, marked by hunger, you cannot stop yourself from wondering – what dangers shaped them so, and what brought them here to safety, and what terrors (what marvels) might they have seen in the fallen world beyond the light?
.
The Taamas captain’s voice is rough, but when she speaks, it takes on a rhythm like song, and what she speaks of – it isn’t real, it never was, but even as you shiver at the wrongness, you hear truth beneath the lies, like light on the edge of shadow on the edge of light; you listen to her tale, the rise and fall of it like waves in darkness, and as those waves submerge you, every story you never told comes spinning back, and you are changed.