I am the pattern, the plague, and the prison --
He laughs at that, amused by her description of them and finding that it is strangely fitting for what he has seen of them. The sound is throaty and deep, rumbling out of his chest as thunder may roll across the sky. “What a sad thing to fight over,” he muses, wondering at how they must view themselves. So grand in their adventured—in their makeshift thrones. Do they not realize that they are but specs of dirt in the vast universe? They are no more consequential than shells that wash up along the shore and twice as brittle.
But, to them, it must feel so terribly important.
(It does not occur to him that he is no larger than the rest of them now. No different in his fragility.)
“Whatever amuses them, I suppose,” he finally says, bringing his piercing gaze back down to her so that he can study the endless depths of her eyes. The way that she glows and fills up the space between them. The way that she feels ancient and yet entirely new to him. He has talked to so many—gods and demigods and mortals alike—and yet he cannot remember if he has ever talked to a star before.
He finds that he likes it.
And he is glad to find someone who is as bitter as he. He nods at her explanation, feeling it in the very marrow of his bones. “It’s a strange magic to be sure.” There is no attempt at condolences, at trying to appease her. Morrowind knows enough to know that he could not possibly right this wrong. No more than she could bring him back to his family, to his courts, to his world. He would never dream of trying.
“You would have liked it,” he decides. “It was full of others, like me.” A pause, her own bitterness finding its hooks in his words. “Or least how I was.” It softens though as he grows nostalgic, his gaze going past her to the horizon as if he could see it there. “We lived in the belly of storms and at the root of them. We were gods. Careless, scheming, cruel—as varied as the creatures who live here, I suppose.”
Another laugh, although not as amused.
“But perhaps more powerful.”
MORROWIND
