Being able to shift is not worth taking a life - she would rather him not be able to shift at all than to be a murderer. But Mazikeen does not say this out loud just yet. The lesson that she was supposed to have learned during her quest has finally sunk in years - and though she loves her ability to change shapes, adores the family that the Pack has given her, if Mazikeen woke up tomorrow and could no longer shift again it would not devastate her. It is not everything. And if eating the hearts of other animals was what it took to get it back, she would live the rest of her days as a horse.
Instead of saying all that - she asks softly “I can shift into a wyvern, a dragon, and many other things. Would you like to eat my heart too, Malik?” Mazikeen hates that she doesn’t know for sure what his answer will be or that she does not know what she would do if he were to attack her for her weaknesses. She couldn’t fight back, not against him, but she did not want to die anymore. “Your father did. The day you were born. I survived thanks to the kindness of someone else then - I don’t think I’ll be so lucky a second time.”
Or however many deaths it has been now.
As she feels the weight of the memory of waking up with no heart or eyes settle on her, she suddenly wonders if this is a cruel tactic. Mazikeen shakes her dragon’s head to clear it a little, though this does nothing to erase the shine of tears in her orange eyes as she watches her son carefully, her voice quiet. “I know this isn’t what we taught you before, I know it’s probably very confusing.” She looks down to the wyvern that no longer struggles, that seems to understand that its life depends on this conversation. Whether it can actually understand them, she doesn’t know. “This wyvern may be someone’s parent. If it does not go back to the nest with a belly full of fish to share with hatchlings and they die, does that matter?”
Her gaze moves back to Malik, wondering what she needs to say to get him to understand. She had not been terribly concerned with teaching him lessons beyond 'don't bother me' before and she does not know how to do it now that it matters. “If we killed all the deer and moved from land to land, eventually there would be nothing left to eat at all. There needs to be a balance. Generations of deer are required to keep generations of us and other predators alive - and for that, some need to survive.”
@
Malik