>>5618727You tell the tale as it was told to you, more or less: the tale of woe and horror, of loss and shame and bitter spite. You sand down the rougher edges—the forswearing of blood-vengeance against all mammals, the conspiring to subvert the governments, erode their institutions, weaken their wills and hamper their happiness. These things are all true—you’re actively furthering those goals right now—but they’re not important. What you attempt to communicate to Ekaterine is the glory of the Age of Darkness—
“A misssnomer, in ssome waysss,” you point out. “It wass an age of LEARNING… Of technologies and magicksss that have ssince been ssdly lossst. We lived in great citiesss, populated by sssundry Reptilian racesss… Mossst now exxtinct, or elsse degraded.”
“It sounds… Lovely,” Ekarine says, politely if not entirely convincingly.
“I wouldn’t know,” you admit with a shrug. “I wasss born… Afterward.”
You tell her of the life YOU know—of a hollow-hearted people, cast into a TRUE darkness, a darkness of the spirit. You tell of the empty and deprived existence of the world below—of cowering, never seeing the very stars which once dictated your people’s lives and destinies. You tell her of the empty halls and eroding monuments, of the stale and half-rotten meals of pallid bug-meat, of an entire world that could fit within a single city-block of Hawksong.
“I grew up locked away in a boxx,” you hiss, surprising yourself with how bitter is the venom of this truth upon your tongue.
“I understand that much, at least,” the Princess says. “But… Well, not like that, obviously. I’m sorry. That is quite presumptive of me to claim… I mean, I’ve never been… Not like that.”
“No,” you agree, looking around at the shifting but ALWAYS resplendent ‘cage’ wherein the Princess has lived her life—roughly, you suppose, as long as you’ve lived yours. “Not like that.”
As you tell the tale—particularly of your first sight of the sun, the moon, the stars, the forest and mountains and lakes and SEA!—you start to speaks with greater enthusiasm. You find yourself not just relating a story, but engaging in a true dialogue: the Princess is a sheltered creature, but she has read much more widely than you, and seen samples of the world beyond, and seems very well-educated in the world’s wonders.
“Oh, I wish I could SEE the Silverwood! I’ve always… Well, it’s a silly little girl’s fancy, but a piece of the Feywood, or the moon’s own forests, placed upon the earth?”
“I hear that the deer are so tame,” she tells you, “that they’ll eat from your hand, if you know the right elven words! And the birds are supposedly ANGELIC!”
