I am the pattern, the plague, and the prison --
It is grating to look so similar to the mortals around him. Grating to be among them and not look at all set apart. Once, he had the power to toy in their lives, should he have wanted. (He never did. Never had any desire to meddle at all with their simple desires.) He once had the gift of the storms in his fist. He had once had the ability to call down the storms and bring forth the terror of it on a whim.
And now he is merely at their whim.
Just as mortal and weak as the next one.
But when he is with Islas, he can nearly forget that. It feels as though he is in the presence of the Goddess of the Heavens, as if he is hosting her in the court of his old home, and he can pretend that all is right again. Perhaps that is why he lingers. Why he was drawn back to her—to the alienness of her.
“That sounds familiar,” he muses, thinking back to earlier conversations when he had first come to this world. Had another told him something similar? He can hardly remember now, and he knows that he would not have heeded their advice if they had. But Islas is one of him, one of them, and he heeds it when it comes from her. “I think I shall,” he says with a nod of his massive head. “Soon.”
His ears perk slightly as she explains the world around them, his mouth frowning slightly. “A kingdom?” he sounds unconvinced as he takes in the land. There was no richness to it. Nothing that spoke of royalty, but he knows this world is not home and Islas has no reason to lie so he just rolls his massive shoulders, taking her word. “I assume that you are Queen,” he goes on, not imagining a world where anyone would dare to reign over the heavens brought to life. “I would love to see more of your land.”
At her question, there is the barest hint of agitation on his expression but it disappears quickly.
“I have nowhere else to be.”
MORROWIND
