[That is mahogany Alistair. Actually it's mostly glass and bone, carted here, there, everywhere, an artifact picked up and of unknown origin. She's fond of the shadows it casts in the right light.]
You would. [An agreement. An echo. Perhaps both. She waves for him to sit. There's even food today, something between a cake and biscuit with nuts and dried fruits that witches get their hands on because they always know where to look for these sorts of things.]
What I knew of souls prior was shapeshifting, that is to copy the soul of a creature, so...I had some understanding. To know such an intimate detail of another being. Of a being that cannot speak. One other than you or I. [She's talking around it, they both know that when Alistair's known her as long as he has but if he ever heard her talking about her magic back then (and it was Shale who had the interest anyway) then he'd have reason to shut his ears. They weren't friends then.
She had spite enough to spare.] Kieran had his own soul, yes. There has always been Kieran but you've spent time with him, you know there are things he's said or known that he shouldn't even when with all I taught him, raised in the place that I raised him to be safe. That would have come from the Old God. Perhaps the dreams and nightmares are the only place he might have made some sort of sense of it, alarming enough to an adult, but to a child--
[The guilt is bile, lancing up and through her--
(It's gone. It's in Flemeth's hands, Mythal's hands, there are two hands, four hands, they overlap upon something blue that her son carried that she carried and if she looks too hard upon it the picture blurs entirely. Her hands are flat against the table, the grain of the wood. She is here. She is now. They are two people talking of the son they share as hundreds of others do.)]
I can't know. Not for certain. Mother has the Old God soul and Kieran is Kieran, but if he's the same person now...well he can't be. He won't be. He's changed. What was done in the first place wasn't ever done with him in mind, I've-- I've learnt to live with that.
[And she has. The set of her mouth, the quiet acceptance that sounds un-Morrigan-like; she's made a space inside herself for what comes, when it comes, if it comes (when). Carved it. Readied it. This is what it is to be a mother, Flemeth taught that particular lesson well enough and Alistair's own upbringing was hardly better than hers. Afterthoughts in a story someone else wrote to be put forward as required and hadn't she insisted upon the same?]
no subject
You would. [An agreement. An echo. Perhaps both. She waves for him to sit. There's even food today, something between a cake and biscuit with nuts and dried fruits that witches get their hands on because they always know where to look for these sorts of things.]
What I knew of souls prior was shapeshifting, that is to copy the soul of a creature, so...I had some understanding. To know such an intimate detail of another being. Of a being that cannot speak. One other than you or I. [She's talking around it, they both know that when Alistair's known her as long as he has but if he ever heard her talking about her magic back then (and it was Shale who had the interest anyway) then he'd have reason to shut his ears. They weren't friends then.
She had spite enough to spare.] Kieran had his own soul, yes. There has always been Kieran but you've spent time with him, you know there are things he's said or known that he shouldn't even when with all I taught him, raised in the place that I raised him to be safe. That would have come from the Old God. Perhaps the dreams and nightmares are the only place he might have made some sort of sense of it, alarming enough to an adult, but to a child--
[The guilt is bile, lancing up and through her--
(It's gone. It's in Flemeth's hands, Mythal's hands, there are two hands, four hands, they overlap upon something blue that her son carried that she carried and if she looks too hard upon it the picture blurs entirely. Her hands are flat against the table, the grain of the wood. She is here. She is now. They are two people talking of the son they share as hundreds of others do.)]
I can't know. Not for certain. Mother has the Old God soul and Kieran is Kieran, but if he's the same person now...well he can't be. He won't be. He's changed. What was done in the first place wasn't ever done with him in mind, I've-- I've learnt to live with that.
[And she has. The set of her mouth, the quiet acceptance that sounds un-Morrigan-like; she's made a space inside herself for what comes, when it comes, if it comes (when). Carved it. Readied it. This is what it is to be a mother, Flemeth taught that particular lesson well enough and Alistair's own upbringing was hardly better than hers. Afterthoughts in a story someone else wrote to be put forward as required and hadn't she insisted upon the same?]