chaele
worship like a dog
Her heart sinks with the impulse of fear, fist clenching around the stray hair that had only just found the inside of two fingers. The offending arm trembles within his grasp, her fragile mortality apparent despite her sagacious airs. Her eyes, shadowed within the ivory mask, focus on the strange lights that arc beneath his skin.
They both know that there is power in pieces of demi-gods, and it is true that Chaele intended to take what she could for her own ritual magicks. But the first ritual is to be for Nate himself, and the shaman is keen to prove her innocence as she lifts the two little plants in her free hand and twirls them between thumb and forefinger. “It is everything you care about,” she explains, voice thin with a familiar attempt at brushed-away logic. “A talisman.”
She tugs away, relenting the hair; if she had one, it is dropped by splayed, insisting fingers. “Keep it, burn it, bury it. Whatever you have stopped caring about does not matter. Whatever is left-- that is the concerning part, as you say.”
They both know that there is power in pieces of demi-gods, and it is true that Chaele intended to take what she could for her own ritual magicks. But the first ritual is to be for Nate himself, and the shaman is keen to prove her innocence as she lifts the two little plants in her free hand and twirls them between thumb and forefinger. “It is everything you care about,” she explains, voice thin with a familiar attempt at brushed-away logic. “A talisman.”
She tugs away, relenting the hair; if she had one, it is dropped by splayed, insisting fingers. “Keep it, burn it, bury it. Whatever you have stopped caring about does not matter. Whatever is left-- that is the concerning part, as you say.”
at the shrine of my lies
