othellovonryan | (no subject)

(no subject)

Noise.

It starts as just irritation. A metaphorical crawling under your skin. Things are too noisy, too bright, there is too much happening all the time and you can't take it all in-

Then silence it, make it yours, make it you, take control and destroy what will not submit

It sounds so inviting, a freedom from the noise, but its wrong, its wrong, its wrong and the noise is getting louder, mechanical and foreboding as it sees you, it knows you are there, and it wants to make you apart of it.

Anatawa hitorijanai

For a moment, there is quiet.

You breathe.

And fall through water.

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[Cahterine Foundling sighs, letting her eyes shut, briefly. The Warden - not of East or West, but of all things with a story, all that earn a Name - opens them with a thin-lipped not-smile. she knows what she has to say. there's only one thing for it. any other words would be spent cheaply, and hit like limp water.]

Life is a long game of learning you can do a lot of things you used to tell yourself you couldn't - even I started with sharp things in an alley and worked my way up.

Let me tell you a story, [she says, and lets the memory sweep from her hand to Donnie like a tide, instead.

Once more I found the Marshal of Callow standing beneath a sycamore.

The same as last time, a bone-dry skeleton of a tree hollowed out inside. Dead and dying, the limbs having yet to catch up to the emptiness at the heart of it. Juniper’s escort had stayed far, as ordered, and as I limped past them across the dusty ground I found my eye dragged above. Sunset was painting the sky in layers, just like the stones of the hills to the west: the dark blue of night high above, with a distant moon, but then it lightened. Yellowed. Only to deepen once more, orange and red and at last a rich purple. Day died and its death throes shifted across the stone and dust, shade cutting in fluid slices as it swallowed up Creation in a never-sated maw. The Wasteland, for all its many dangers, was capable of eerie beauty at times.

Juniper was not leaning against the tree. I saw that first, even as I approached her. I had thought to find here the same hunched and self-loathing creature that’d been wearing the skin of one of my oldest friends for over a sennight, but this was… different. Her back might not be straight, but she was not sagging like withered vine. Instead she stood there with a lost and thoughtful look on her face, looking straight west. I followed her gaze, founding nothing more than the sappers of the Rebel Legions at work digging their own trench and palisade. They were skilled hands, well-drilled for all that they had deserted the Tower’s service. The three generals leading them had kept them disciplined.

I hesitated to break the silence. I’d found what I’d thought I would, and I was not sure I wanted to interrupt… whatever this was. For all the intensity of the Hellhound’s gaze, I had of late seen in her fragility that had me staying my hand. As I wrestled with my doubts, she came to a decision of her own. Her voice was rasping when she spoke. Dry, and she licked her chops before doing it.

“The Scribe, she said that Sacker’s in command among the deserters,” Juniper said. “Is it true?”

I hummed.

“Can’t be sure,” I admitted. “But the Jacks heard the same thing. I think Mok has more pull when it comes to strategic decisions, since he has the biggest army, but that Sacker’s the lead for tactics.”

Her eyes never left the sappers digging to the west. I bit my lip, then cast aside my hesitation. It wasn’t doing me any good.

“They tell me you’ve been here more than two hours,” I said. “Have you been looking at them the whole time?”

The Hellhound laughed. It was a low, rumbling thing. Not quite amused or happy, more like a… release. Vented feeling.

“Yeah, I have,” Juniper said. “Because there’s this…”

She shook her head.

“She was like an aunt to me, Sacker,” the orc said.

I did remember. It felt like a lifetime ago, but I remembered. I’d never seen her as embarrassed as she had been when I’d first seen her meet her mother and almost-aunt fuss over her after she became a legate. It’d been a memorable sight.

“Auntie Sacks,” I idly said.

“She used to tell me stories,” Juniper distantly said. “When I was small, Catherine. To make me go to sleep. That was all back in Summerholm, before I went home to be raised by my father. Goblin stories about gore and raids and little girls that got gobbled up for being too slow or too dim.”

“She seemed close to your mother,” I said.

I’d never grown to know either more than shallowly, but it’s been obvious to be even when I’d been young.

“She was probably Mom’s closest friend in the world,” she replied. “She spent more years of her life with Sacker at her side than she did my own father. It showed. Goblins aren’t usually… good with children. Sacker was making an effort.”

“She seems to have made an impression on you,” I said.

Juniper flashed pale fangs at the deepening night.

“She did,” the Hellhound said. “But not just for the stories. Did you ever hear she was meant to rise to Marshal in Ranker’s place when she retired?”

“There were rumours,” I acknowledged. “You know, back before…”

I gesture vaguely, meaning a great many things but not in particular. She snorted in amusement.

“I looked up to her for that,” Juniper said. “Even more than I did my mother, because my mother was never going to rise higher than she had. It wasn’t like Istrid Knightsbane I wanted to be when I grew up, Catherine. It was like Grem and Ranker and Nim. The Marshals. And Sacker, she had the stuff. The marshals knew it, so the Carrion Lord. If things had turned out different, it could be her serving as the Tower’s greatest captain instead of Nim.”

“A lot of things could have gone differently,” I said.

My hand half-rose to the cloth covering the eye sloppiness had cost me before I forced it down. Some mistakes stayed with you longer than others. I found Juniper’s gaze had moved to me, catching sight of the aborted movement, and I flushed in embarrassment. Those kinds of regrets I preferred kept unseen from even my friends.

“It’s an eye, Catherine,” Juniper said. “Just an eye. You could lose both and still be who you are. And that’s what eats at me. When did you know?”

“Know what?”

Her gaze was alight with something I could not quite name.

“Who you were,” Juniper gravelled. “We’ve hung titles around your neck like necklaces at a summer fair, Warlord. Countess. Squire. Arch-heretic of the East. Black Queen, Queen of Lost and Found, of Winter, of the Hunt. First Under the Night. But before that, when did you know?”

Half a dozen answers, some flippant and others rote, came to the tip of my tongue. I could not get any of them out, not meeting her eyes with my last remaining one. Seeing the cast of her face in the last gaps of the day, the despair and the hunger that burned in her eyes. I did love her, Juniper. My own Hellhound. As deeply as I did the Woe. I’d loved her as the hard-eyed foe I had to overcome to prove myself worthy of my father’s tutelage, when we’d both been children, and I loved her now as the woman who’d built a kingdom and an army with me. So I stayed silent, for a long moment, and told her the truth.

“In the Everdark,” I quietly said. “There was…”

I swallowed. I’d never spoken of this to anyone, not even Hakram. The words did not come easy. Was there a way in any language ever made that I could truly explain what they had been, the last moments of the battle in Great Strycht?

“I lost,” I finally said, tone quiet. “They carved me open, Juniper, and all the power and the death and the madness I’d gorged myself on came pouring back out.”

I looked down and found my hand was shaking a bit. I had come to understand the Sisters, and they me, but that had been after. After.

“It was like blinders went off my eyes,” I murmured. “And Gods, but I had done so many horrible things. More of them were all I could see ahead, and I was just so fucking tired. So I went down.”

I closed my fingers into a fist, to kill the tremors.

“And I stayed down, waiting to choke in the snow.”

I heard the sharp intake of breath.

“But I didn’t,” I murmured. “It took too long, you see. Snow melted enough I could breathe. And I still wanted to stay down, to sleep, but I just…”

I laughed, as mirthlessly as she had.

“It was a choice,” I said. “And there was nothing weighing the balance either way. So I ask myself, why not?”

I tightened my cloak around my shoulders, shivering.

“And then?” Juniper quietly asked.

“And then I got up,” I softly smiled. “And I think that’s what stayed with me, Juniper. The even balance and the question and the choice I made. And it’s gone to shit since, you know. Death and doom and the age falling down on our heads. And every day the same choice is there waiting to be made: lie down…”

“Or stand up,” the Hellhound finished.

I nodded.

“I’ve stayed on my feet,” I said. “I will, until I am either victorious or I die. I think that’s what left of me, when you whittle away the rest.”

Juniper looked away.

“I thought it’d be victory,” the Hellhound admitted.

“It’s never the victories that stay with you,” I tiredly said.

Large fingers laid against the dead wood.

“No,” the Marshal of Callow said, “I guess not.”

A moment passed.

“You’re looking west again.”

“Ranker’s dead,” Juniper quietly said. “But Sacker’s here. Nim is here. And Grem uses Sepulchral’s army. Everyone who is or could be a Marshal of Praes.”

I studied her, but her expression was hard to make out and her eyes stayed west.

“There’s this thing I see, Catherine,” she confessed. “The lay of it. Two hours I’ve watched the sappers, how quick they work. How quick the work will be done. And I know how quickly Nim’s will work, and ours and…”

“And what?” I quietly asked.

“And there is a box,” the Marshal of Callow said. “Where the battle will happen. I see it. It’s where it’ll all happen and we can shape it.”

I could smell it the air, now. Victory. Yet Creation did not shiver, fate did not ripple like a lake in the wind, because this was not the writ of any Gods. It was just Juniper of the Red Shields, looking at a dusty field in the middle of nowhere and being the woman I’d glimpsed in her at seventeen.

“You want to fight,” I said.

It was not a question.

“Sacker hasn’t seen it,” Juniper said, sounding disbelieving. “She can’t have, not if she’s raising those walls. Sacker hasn’t seen it, and she could have been a Marshal.”

Large fingers clawed at the thin bark of the dying sycamore. She turned to me.

“I could be wrong,” she told me, tone anguished. “I could be just seeing what’s not there. I’ve… these have not been good days, Catherine, and I did not stand up in the face of them. I need you to know that I could be wrong.”

I would have answered, but she was not done. The words were spilling out of her like broken barrel.

“I feel like my entire life I’ve been drawing a bow,” Juniper said. “And ever since I’ve been your marshal, I’ve just… stood there. And my hand’s been trembling. But this? This place, this box, these foes?”

The hand left the tree and she pushed away, straightening her back.

“I can release the arrow,” Juniper of the Red Shields said, pleaded. “I can win this. Please.”

And I could have taken her by the arm, brought her close and told her that she did not need to win back my trust because she’d never lost it. But I knew, sure as dawn, that it was not what she wanted. Needed. And I was my father’s daughter, so I offered her the very same grace I was once offered. My wrist snapped out and metal slapped against my palm.

I handed her a knife, pommel first.

“If you mean the words,” I replied, “commit. Carve them.”

Incomprehension, first, but I saw her eyes clear as she matched my gaze. I did not mean the plea, or the apology that came unspoken with it. Those were between us. What I wanted from her was conviction. The Hellhound leaned close to the tree, reaching inside, and carved. The strokes shook, at first, but grew certain. Her hand did not tremble. And when she withdrew, deep in the hollow of a dead tree waited these words: Marshal Juniper wins here. I smiled, startled.

“Here?” I asked, amused. “Exactly?”

“This tree is where we win,” the Marshal of Callow said, tone even, “and everyone else loses.”

She offered me back the knife, pommel first. I took it.

“Let’s go home,” I said. “It’s getting late.”

“Yeah,” Juniper said, eyes red. “Let’s go home, Catherine.”

We’d left alone. We came back together.

she grips Donnie's shoulder, and doesn't let go just leans in and whispers, as the memory finishes:]

Do you know how Juniper and I met? She tried to beat me at a game of raising the towers, knowing I'd never played it before. So I kicked over her tower.

[Its a powerful memory. There is no doubt about that. Of Hope, but not the kind of hope born out of optimistic naivety.]

[Its the kind of hope that leads to his twin, two decades and change in the future, that tells Casey two things: Save the world and grab a slice. Because saving the world was necessary, but he wanted Casey to also finally have a chance to be a teenager.]

[Its the kind of hope where for once, his science was wrong, where the worst thing to happen to Raph was proof that the day and he could be saved.]

[Its the kind of hope where Raph throws himself off a goddamn cliff in the worst kind of trust fall exercise.]

[Its the kind of hope where their father hands over the final piece of armor in exchange for their lives.]

[The decisions made that are terrible, but they're a terrible that allows for a step after. Casey got that slice. They saved and caught Raph. They were able to stop the Shredder, eventually.]

[So different from Gram-Gram. From their grandmother and great-grandfather, who resigned themselves to the sacrifice, to duty, without thinking of there being a next for themselves. Maybe those choices were less terrible, but they came with a high cost for the ease.]

[He knows.]

[Choosing to stand is not an easy choice.]

[It will never be an easy choice.]

[He looks down at his hands, at the crackling scars over his arms.]

[That moment on Staten Island, when his mind is racing, trying to think of a way to break through to the Prison Dimension, to retrieve Leo, but there won't be time, the Kraang is going to kill him, he doesn't have time, and the despair is all consuming. If only he hadn't been so weak. If only he had been able to protect Mikey, Raph could have been with him, could have given him another option-

But Mikey didn't fall. Didn't freeze. He stood up, and he reached and reached and reached until he made the laws of the universe bend to his will, to tear a hole through to Leo. A hole that was starting to burn parts of Mikey away, but Raph and him were quick to give him power, to share the burden, because whatever the consequences, it was worth it if they all went home.]

They're amazing. My brothers. If it wasn't intelligence based, I never had a hope of beating them. [He laughs a bit.] I cheat a lot of games. Playing fair usually means I lose.

Raph just makes everything feel safer. He always did. If he's around, its so easy to believe things will be okay.

Mikey always finds the light. In people who really didn't deserve a chance, when winters were rough, and when we needed hope, belief, that things could be change.

And Leo...Leo always knew what we needed. What I needed. The words we needed to hear, how to wind down, how to find hope. He...he was the first one who didn't demand 'showing' to just 'get it.' Before the others figured out how I worked, he just...knew.

Our world was small, and I could fool myself into thinking I could protect it. But now there's more and I-

I don't-

I don't want to lose anyone-

[Which is when the teal begins to burn, steam raising off Sacrifice as he starts to scream, collapsing against Cat. Any points of contact with the teal beginning to burn her too.]

[But the teal is getting to be Less far more quickly now.]

[she's endured worse. will again, and that's just how it is. you get back up, you take the hit, you get back up.]

Hhhhht. You know what having people who have your back can be, Donnie?

The biggest way to cheat the rules of the gameboard you have. Don't - nnngh - lock it away for the sake of a safety you'll never know.

Use it. Your relationships aren't just problems to solve - they are the solution to your problems. So put that ability to untangle the knots of the universe to work like I know you can and instead of trying to throw them in a box and away from where you can do the work you need to with them, grab hold of the tools you need to solve this problem already.

I know! I know! I know I know I know, okay?! I know its easier with-with-with others-with help, but I don't-

[There's another pained screaming, curling up against her, sobbing in pain and in pain that isn't physical.]

I'm t-t-tired. So tired, I don't...don't....

[The teal sears away as words escape him and then there's another presence. A hand on Cat's side because]

[Well]

[Its a seven year old Donnie, with glasses and a purple hoody, and hand can only reach so high.]

Hug's good. Time.

... you've got a lot of yourself in here, you know that? Makes me want to say something about how you have a bigger heart than your body knows what to do with.

[anyway, she relents from holding Sacrifice so hard, but only because she's going to pull him and this smaller turtle into a hug.]

Not very good at ... these, [she says, frowning.] But ... here we are.

[The tiny Donnie lets out a breathy laugh.] Or egocentric. Joke.

[Sacrifice doesn't fight, merely holds on as the searing gets to be less by virtue of there being less space for the teal. The wracking sobs are still happening, but it may be he just needs to get it out.]

[Nor does the smaller turtle, though he's careful to not touch the teal at all. No thank you.]

Did good. Connected me.

[yeah, yeah, she says she's not good at this but she's still gonna hold him till he gets it out of his system.]

Some of the kindest people I've known have also been the most self-involved people I've ever met. Comes with the territory, I expect; nobody's charity's ever so selfless as they make out.

Either way, it puts you in good company, for what it's worth. "Connected you", huh?

[He tilts his head, considers that. Shrugs.] Selfless overrated. [Listen, he thinks the world of his brothers' goodness, but he knows they have to be getting something out of it, even if its feel good to do good.]

[He nods.]

The Core disconnected to keep the Corruption away. [That's Sacrifice, still slumped against her.]

Aha.

[she makes a small humming thoughtful noise.]

Are you disconnected from anywhere else, still? I seem to remember taking a wrong turn on my way to Selfishness, that landed me here ...

Raph fixing. Trust connected.

Remind me to thank that boy myself ... I'm assuming that's your brother.

Anything else? I'm not gonna leave Donnie a wreck if there's still actual problems in here I shouldn't just leave him to fix by himself. [a beat.] Even if there's a lot more of him able to fix those than I thought.

[A nod.] Eldest.

[Sacrifice looks to the Core, who considers.]

Its difficult to say. We need therapy, but...

Talk to others. [And he's going to pull away, but offer Cat a hand.]

Right, then. Take me there. I'll see what I can do.

[she turns to look Sacrifice in the eye, and rest her hands briefly on his shoulders.] ... you're not going through this alone, kid. Never alone, not again.

[Sacrifice looks up to meet her eyes briefly and then looks away.] I know. Anatawa hitorijanai. You are not alone. Its just...hard to remember when a snake is making everything worse.

Yeah .... unfortunately, that's his job.

We can give him a fight worth remembering about it, though. [she grins.] I certainly intend to, whatever else I might be planning on that front. And you had better believe I'm always planning something about it.

...there is...an idea.

But maybe not something to talk about when there's another one in my head.

Don't worry about it right now. You - uh, collective "you", right in this moment, I guess - still need to help me figure out how to solve my dungeon floor convection problem so I can get Max a floor made of lava that won't turn Hunter into a flaming twig to try and fly over and the next floor down into an accidental sauna.

.. and I've got to meet this "Eldest" Donnie, awhile, anyway.

Raph is the eldest brother. The Core...

The Core doesn't talk so much with words. [The child Donnie shrugs.]

We do have experience with make floor safe lava.

Oh. Right. Got it.

... then let's go wherever it is we're going, hey? [and she reaches over to squeeze the child Donnie's hand.] I still need to get that robot you out of his chains, now that the worst of it's passed. He needs room to dream free on his own damn terms.

[The Core nods and a doorway forms.]

Family memory.

[... she thought of many.

she thought of green eyes unsmiling over a smile like a knife's edge: the first family she'd ever had.

she thought of the Woe, gathered 'round the fire, the five of them that were sometimes six but always five. steady hands carving trinkets to keep busy, between hunts for the only prey worth taking. eyes that could and would see forever, turned towards a precious few. a callow crown for a girl that stole all their hearts before she stole a kingdom of her own. a stalwart steady port in every storm, dead of hand but full of such living integrity it could refuel an entire people with its implacable drive. a golden-eyed interloper in the affairs of others, bound inextricably to all their fates and one. and herself, who dragged them into it all and who found herself dragged into even more because they'd refused to let her be merely their leader.

she thought ... no. let it be a memory of Masego.]

[and so it was - and she could feel the snowfall again like it was yesterday ...]

[The Flowing Gardens would never be called that again.

The old enchantments here had unravelled, unmade by the greater powers that had run wild across islets and canals. What had been left behind was beautiful in the eeriest of ways. Moren’s final winter lingered, the luminescent trees and flowers trapped in ice – forever perfect, forever blooming. A pale carpet of snow that no footsteps could mar remained, sparing only the frozen canals. There the last echo of the ancient songs of the Garden remained, for under a layer of cracked ice water flowed and so the canals groaned out strange hymns that made the heart shiver. And at the heart of it all stood a broken throne, before which we had killed a god by raising another.

Loc Ynan’s corpse, scoured clean of the Dead King’s soul shard, remained there with a spear of yew through the heart.

It was a hallowed placed, for good or ill, and its beauty was not unlike that of the Firstborn: strange and terrible and keening like a broken heart. I stood among the paleness with an old friend at my side, his eyes – one mortal, one anything but – alight with wonder as he watched the wind thread through his fingers.

“It will snow,” Masego said, “every time the moon is full. I can see the echo.”

I hummed in agreement. I could feel it too, how tonight would return to this place again and again.

And it was not yet over, for all that we were all bone-tired, keep on our feet only by the strange febrile energy that came of victory and feeling it all coming together. That tonic would fade before long, but we still had a little while in us still. So the two of us, together, watched as Sve Noc embraced the divinity that the Hierophant had forged for them. The night thrummed, as if defiant of the dawn yet to come, and wind like a warm breath rippled across Serolen. I couldn’t see it the way Masego could, his eye laying bare the truths of the world, but I trailed down my finger down the string of the story and smiled. The Sisters, at long last, were slipping the noose.

“Light and Night, huh,” I murmured. “Symmetry in all things.”

“Their godhead was flawed,” Hierophant mused. “Split from the start. What they received they gave out, keeping part for themselves, but that was making a single broken god and a million godlings. The godhead is a trick of perspective, Catherine – it can be shared, but it cannot be divided.”

So they’d fixed it, he and Akua. Gathered it all together again, dissolving the nails that bound all Firstborn to the Night, and handed it back to Sve Noc to put together into a true godhead. And now Sve Noc, the Sisters and the Crows and a hundred names more, were giving their gift away once more – but not in the same way they once had, oh no. Firstborn no longer held Night, no more than humans held Light: it was outside them, borrowed. Granted by a higher power.

“They won’t like it,” I quietly said. “Not at first. But they’ll get used to it.”

The worthy would still take and rise. Night could no longer be taken the old way, because now to harvest it from drow or others grew the Night as a whole instead of a Mighty’s personal hoard, but there were still gains. No one had ever quite figured out what defined how much Light individuals were capable of wielding, answers varying from a birth talent to the depth of faith or strength of the body. There would be no such doubt over Night: the more one added to it, the more of it one could wield. As one’s power grew, their body would change along the same lines holding much Night had once caused: indifference to age and silver eyes.

Sve Noc would not shortchange those who had fought for them, their loyal Mighty not suddenly faced with decrepitude.

I knew exactly what those changes would feel like because I’d already gone through them. My eye was not silver – not yet – but the rest? There were none, save perhaps Radegast the Guest, who could come close to wielding as much Night as I could. And as for age… I’d once told the Dead King the years would kill me and the old monster had just smiled, before answering – ah, but how many years would it take? Many, I knew. Enough that spending eleven years of my life to snuff out the Saint of Swords had not left a visible mark. I was not sure how to feel about having been the precursor to what Night would now grant, the first draft of the work.

“It won’t matter,” Masego said, openly pleased. “The Sisters have faith, now.”

I almost smiled. Someone who did not know Hierophant might have taken that as a spurt of religiosity, but I knew better. He was being quite literal, because when he’d mended Night and guided Sve Noc into rebuilding it he’d done more than just smooth away a few hard edges. He’d fixed it, the flaw. Now it wasn’t just a shoddy mantle of power that the Sisters bore and that… changed things. I raised my hand, a mirror to his, but it was not the wind I was grasping. It was threads, millions of them blooming. Night had been born finite, parceled from its very first breath, but that had changed. It was no longer something that could be counted or measured.

I watched the faith, the earnest belief of millions of drow swelling the godhead of Sve Noc, and let out a convulsive laugh. After all these years, all the sacrifices and the despair and the darkness, the two sisters had found the end of their winding road: they’d slipped the noose. The debt of the Firstborn would be wiped clean, the destruction they’d staved off with a loan and then Winter’s flesh at last gone for food. They were no longer finite, their godhead a living and breathing truth, and so what did a few measly years mean for them to pay? Faith fed Night, fed its twin goddesses, and like a beacon in the dark their power filled the sky above us.

Sve Noc paid the old debt of the Twilight Sages, returned the years borrowed, and for them it was no different than a sigh. Time meant nothing to the immortal.

“How does it feel?” I asked.

Masego turned to look at me with his mortal eye.

“What does?”

“How does it feel,” I smiled, “to be first man in Creation to ever make a Choir?”

Because that was what he and Akua had done, when it came down to it. In Night instead of Light, but that was a shallow difference when it came down to it. Should I call my patronesses angels of thievery and murder instead of gods, what would it change? And that, more than the rest, made it plain the scope of what he’d achieved tonight. Because Choirs did not choose a single nation, and single people, and remain bound to them. They were not so… limited. And come morning, neither would Sve Noc be.

I gave it a month before the first goblin was blessed with Night.

Masego considered my words, face pensive.

“Do you remember,” he finally said, “what the Queen of Summer said to me, when I tried to throw off her binding in Arcadia?”

After the Battle of Five Armies and One, I recalled, and it took me but a moment to recall the words.

“If you’d had a few years, Masego,” I quoted. “You have not seen enough.”

He smiled, closing his fingers around the wind.

“If I met her tomorrow,” Hierophant simply said, “she would be wrong.”

Nothing more needed be said.

The two of us stood there, in companionable silence, until dawn came and pulled the final curtain over it all.]

[she doubted Donnie would understand in full. the significance of most of the exchange would be lost, probably. but the two of them in moonlit Serolen, eyes to the sky, grasping the future they'd created, the wonders they'd seen, together ... it had to be enough. Masego had to be enough; he was family enough to her.]

[A lot is lost. Faith and nebulous concepts were always difficult for him to grasp. He's getting better. That first moment of understanding, of Connection to something so much greater than him, it had given him some needed perspective, but it was still something to take some time to truly understand.]

[But a moment of a changed future, of something better-]

[He smiles and tugs her in to such a moment, if far smaller scale]

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