[ She - hasn't. Caught somewhere between aghast and indignant and how much she has been so privileged in her life. It fixes somewhere so deep, and so unpleasant, in her heart.
She thinks of her mother. Hildegard would stomach not a word out of Tim Stoker's mouth. Her will so absolute and her words are unforgiving. Her mother never suffered a lesser man to speak so in her presence.
Because her mother always knew exactly what she was, before who, or how, or that which she felt.
They thought it was a maidenly shyness alone, and they were not wrong in some forms, it all reviled her, she knew she was sheltered, knew she was but the delicate daughter of greater family who had once been expected to do not much more than marry. That even now, thrust to another world, she treaded water on her expectations at the best of times.
But Tim had - hurt her. So terribly. A way she had never thought another person could do to another. ]
We do not. We do not use these words. No one, not ever, would ever dare challenge my family, they would never commit such blasphemy as what came from Timothy Stoker's mouth as was spoken to me. Because we are far, far worse than anything he has used to describe me. Some paltry creature lurking in the dark. Snaring a man for a wicked device.
You can kill a man, though I ought never to imagine such violence in your hands for surely I should weep to know what made you do so. I do not know if I could kill a man. I know what my people do when we go to war, in the stories of my founders time. We wipe cities from the shore. We drown tens of thousands. We crumble coastlines. When I rage, the ocean rages. We do not kill, we consume. Back to the place where life began, where you cannot live, but we are bonded in our very souls with.
It is not that I should think I could not. It is that I most surely could, but it would not just be Timothy Stoker. There will be no measure left, if it came that.
no subject
She thinks of her mother. Hildegard would stomach not a word out of Tim Stoker's mouth. Her will so absolute and her words are unforgiving. Her mother never suffered a lesser man to speak so in her presence.
Because her mother always knew exactly what she was, before who, or how, or that which she felt.
They thought it was a maidenly shyness alone, and they were not wrong in some forms, it all reviled her, she knew she was sheltered, knew she was but the delicate daughter of greater family who had once been expected to do not much more than marry. That even now, thrust to another world, she treaded water on her expectations at the best of times.
But Tim had - hurt her. So terribly. A way she had never thought another person could do to another. ]
We do not. We do not use these words. No one, not ever, would ever dare challenge my family, they would never commit such blasphemy as what came from Timothy Stoker's mouth as was spoken to me. Because we are far, far worse than anything he has used to describe me. Some paltry creature lurking in the dark. Snaring a man for a wicked device.
You can kill a man, though I ought never to imagine such violence in your hands for surely I should weep to know what made you do so. I do not know if I could kill a man. I know what my people do when we go to war, in the stories of my founders time. We wipe cities from the shore. We drown tens of thousands. We crumble coastlines. When I rage, the ocean rages. We do not kill, we consume. Back to the place where life began, where you cannot live, but we are bonded in our very souls with.
It is not that I should think I could not. It is that I most surely could, but it would not just be Timothy Stoker. There will be no measure left, if it came that.