[Actions, more than emotions, defined love in Myr's idealized view: Clinging to one's wounded beloved despite the world's opposition; nursing the sufferer through its injuries at terrible cost.
That moment the SQUIP, knowing its doom waited for it on the ground below, plummeted from the sky to Linden's rescue.
The field tactician he'd trained to be recognized the moments of weakness to be exploited; the staunch Andrastian mage recoiled at the very idea a demon could offer such self-sacrifice and warrant it in turn; the soft-hearted rest of him wondered at what he'd witnessed and how to put all those disparate messy pieces together in some sort of whole that he could act upon, and act rightly.
Linden deserved it of him.
In no little part because the longer he talks to his friend, the more odd little points of resonance he finds with his own experience as a Circle mage. They'd celebrated their birthdays--but there were so many other things none of them had experience in beyond books and dreams, that they'd speak about in exactly the way Linden does now. Hedged, careful, this is how I've heard it might be, o, that strikes the strangest chord.]
Birthdays were mostly for the youngest, so they felt more at home. There'd be little gifts, and food, sometimes. We might have a feast on the First Enchanter's birthday, but beyond that--
[He rolls a shoulder in a shrug, and smiles a little helplessly. He hasn't much more of an idea, but does that really matter? It means making up their own traditions, which doesn't seem such a bad idea.
If it can be done better than drinking alone.]
That sounds like our Satinalia, with the masks and the revelry. Which'd be today? Or tomorrow--if it's the eleventh month... [He's kept a calendar in his memory palace, but his poor sleep has made it grown disjoint. Still--it's close enough to Satinalia, he thinks, that he might as well celebrate it...
And thinking of the keeping of calendars,]
I was born in an alienage--a sort of, sort of slum for elves. We didn't keep close track of any days but the feast days--and I was taken from it when I was near seven--so I never knew, exactly. Just the season.
Something wrong? [Something barbed and painful, hiding in all this talk of birthdays? Or maybe a holiday that inspired crime carried extra and awful weight for a man of the law...]
no subject
That moment the SQUIP, knowing its doom waited for it on the ground below, plummeted from the sky to Linden's rescue.
The field tactician he'd trained to be recognized the moments of weakness to be exploited; the staunch Andrastian mage recoiled at the very idea a demon could offer such self-sacrifice and warrant it in turn; the soft-hearted rest of him wondered at what he'd witnessed and how to put all those disparate messy pieces together in some sort of whole that he could act upon, and act rightly.
Linden deserved it of him.
In no little part because the longer he talks to his friend, the more odd little points of resonance he finds with his own experience as a Circle mage. They'd celebrated their birthdays--but there were so many other things none of them had experience in beyond books and dreams, that they'd speak about in exactly the way Linden does now. Hedged, careful, this is how I've heard it might be, o, that strikes the strangest chord.]
Birthdays were mostly for the youngest, so they felt more at home. There'd be little gifts, and food, sometimes. We might have a feast on the First Enchanter's birthday, but beyond that--
[He rolls a shoulder in a shrug, and smiles a little helplessly. He hasn't much more of an idea, but does that really matter? It means making up their own traditions, which doesn't seem such a bad idea.
If it can be done better than drinking alone.]
That sounds like our Satinalia, with the masks and the revelry. Which'd be today? Or tomorrow--if it's the eleventh month... [He's kept a calendar in his memory palace, but his poor sleep has made it grown disjoint. Still--it's close enough to Satinalia, he thinks, that he might as well celebrate it...
And thinking of the keeping of calendars,]
I was born in an alienage--a sort of, sort of slum for elves. We didn't keep close track of any days but the feast days--and I was taken from it when I was near seven--so I never knew, exactly. Just the season.
Something wrong? [Something barbed and painful, hiding in all this talk of birthdays? Or maybe a holiday that inspired crime carried extra and awful weight for a man of the law...]