who is the lamb and who is the knife?

[vliste_staba]

Nexus regulars may have seen Deet here and there over the late Fall and the Winter. She's small and a little shy, but very distinctive, especially to human eyes. A girl with green-tinted skin, hair the color of undyed linen, wings like a dragonfly's, and less than two and a half feet tall. Most people assume she's a faery, and she doesn't mind that.

She's never seen without the sprouting wooden staff she carries, and the floor-length black feather cloak on her shoulders, both gifts from the Fallen Angels. They make her feel secure, particularly the cloak. Right now, she's crouched beside a pond, peering at a group of tadpoles milling in the water. Some have legs budding, and she's fascinated to watch this metamorphosis, slow but fast enough to be visible.

Around her, some of the cattails are tinted dark violet, a wash of purple energy that seems to surge and then recede again as the reeds quiver in the wind.

"When someone starts to change," she says, "they never know what they'll really look like when they've finished, do they?"

Sitting back on her heels, she tilts her head to watch the Darkening flux and retreat across the cattails. "And when someone has power, it's hard to decide what to do with it. If you thought there was even a small chance you could save your world from something terrible, what would you sacrifice for it? Would you become another person to do it?"

Comments

[vliste_staba]

Well, he's enormous, but she's seen enormous men be wary before. Something about the careful way he approaches her reminds her of Rian more than anything else. The warrior-guard turned exile, accused of a murder he didn't commit and was more traumatized by than anyone else. She hopes he's doing all right, back in Thra.

In any case, she greets the man with a kind smile and a gentle nod, pointing out one of the tadpoles close to the edge of the pond. It's almost lost its tail.

"I don't know how to measure worth," she says. "Especially not in myself. I started a quest and I haven't really finished it. I could stay here forever and be safe and happy, or I could go back again and fight. I think I would win. I'm not sure what I would do after that."

[azgedaking]

Her smile gets a very faint one in return. She wouldn't be too far off in her assessment. He was an exiled prince who took the fall for his mother for something he didn't do.

"I don't think we should measure our own worth." He dips his fingers in the water, watching the tadpoles scatter. "A worthy man, or woman, can be seen in the actions of the people around them, especially when they have power."

He nods grimly. "I face a similar question, but I would leave thinking about the far future until after the battle is won. It's a distraction to worry that far in advance."

[vliste_staba]

"So you think it would be sensible to try, and let my friends tell me if I...go off the rails, somehow?" It's a possibility she's considered, but if Rian and Brea--or skekGra and UrGoh for that matter--had to stop her, it would hurt them. She might hurt them.

There's a fine line between fear and thinking things through responsibility. She walks on both sides of it.

"Have you ever had a vision?" She asks. "Because I did. And that's why I'm so cautious. I saw myself on the Emperor's throne. Or maybe just what was left of myself."

"It's important to pay attention to things like that, but it's also important not to read too much into them."

[azgedaking]

"Or your enemies." He looks up from the water to the small winged woman. "Friends are displeased when we act uncharacteristically, but an enemy will find pleasure in it."

"No, but the heda do." He'd heard stories of the visions from flame keepers and what they meant. "The Fleimkepa say that visions are good. You have a choice to make it happen or turn away."

[vliste_staba]

"I don't have any enemies," she begins, then pauses and reconsiders. "Well...that's not true, I suppose. There's the skeksis themselves. The emperor. I don't want them to be my enemies."

She tugs at one of the little braids in her hair, frowning in thought. "Maybe that's part of my problem. I want so much for there to be another way, for no one to get hurt. Or at least for no one except the emperor to get hurt. That's the part I don't know if I can manage."

Looking back up at him, she explains, "I don't know what those words mean, but the visions I had came from the Sanctuary Tree. It gave me its own power as it was dying. But I'm not a tree, so it's been...difficult."

[azgedaking]

"You have more luck than I do." He comments. Even his own mother was an enemy at this point unless he was useful for gaining power. As an exile that was unlikely that anything other than his murder facilitating a war that she would want from him.

Roan sighs and stays squatted, lowering one knee to the ground for balance. He'd trained children before so this was not an unusual position though he got the feeling this was not a child simply from the discussion. "Wars are two sided. We can want peace but if the other side chooses war then we have no choice but to battle."

He knew his mindset of diplomacy was strange for his own clan, for the grounder population in general. He clung to it when he could but fought when no options were left.

"It is similar for the heda." He pauses and then figures that she's not familiar with the language. "The commander of the thirteen tribes. They receive the fleim which as the memories of all the commanders before them. It makes them wise and gives them visions from the previous heda to show them the way. The fleimkepa trains and serves the heda and natblida; sees to the rituals for the passing of the fleim."

It still might not make sense. He was still furrow browed from the idea of a tree passing on memories. He wondered how that worked. Between heda, people, he could understand but from a tree to something that looked human was lost on him.

[vliste_staba]

"I'm not sure it's luck so much as I grew up very safe, in a small community." She smiles wryly. "I don't think I ever heard an unkind word among my own people."

She frowns, considering what he says about war, and nods slowly. It reminds her that she can't really expect removing the Emperor to be a linchpin that will turn all the other skeksis in to their friends. The Chamberlain, for one, is his own kind of dangerous. "Either battle or die, you mean," she says. "I don't want to die."

She can tell from his expression he's struggling as much as she is to adjust to these unfamiliar concepts, and that makes her smile, half-relieved, half just friendly. "We're all part of Thra," she says, hoping maybe that will help him make sense of it. "One planet."