>>5619647You stop and think for a moment. You suppose you should have anticipated this turn of events. Your chosen mate here is the flower of a walled garden, yes, but she is a scholar as well, and has demonstrated this more confrontational side before, when pushed. This time, at least, she doesn’t seem ANGRY—not exactly. You get more of a playful sense from her tone and demeanour, and she watches you with patient attentiveness as your formulate your answer. Is this philosophic debate… Sport, to her?
“When I envisssion the Coming Age,” you finally say, “I musst admit… Yesss, it iss ass you ssay. I have sseen too much to think that your ssurfacce racesss are without merit. When I picture it in my mind, all the racess of are alike in ssstature and dignity.”
Ekaterineblinks,s eemingly surprised, then smiels widely.
“That’s a wodneful thing, sir, and—”
You hold up your hand, and the Human Princess silences herself.
“But it’sss naïve… Unrealisstic. It’ss jusst a vision, a dream…”
(Ironic, given the setting of your rendezvous)
“Utopia isssn’t real. There siss not paradise on Earth,” you assert. “A sssociety needs a sstrong guiding hand to enssure that hissstorical enmity does not lead to war, to genocccide.”
Ekaterine shakes her head, hard enough that her bundled locks of hair fall loose.
“That isn’t true!’ she defies you. “That’s what people BELIEVE, but if they could be shown otherwise, there would be no need to, to, to FORCE it upon them.”
“Love mussst sometimes be forced,” you say, paraphrasing your noble Dragon King ancestor, the last King of Bloodrise, in his advice to you. “The ape-men of the ssurfacce will never ssee we ‘monsssterss’ as worthy. If I bring them equality, they will resssent it—rightly, perhapss—asss a sstep DOWN from their current ssuperiority…”
And, in truth, your Master Race is little better. Your people are too bitter and too proud to achieve this vision—a vision that you are admittedly happy to see Ekaterine shares—without tearing down the order of things. Only by tearing down both the world above and the rigid structure of the old order of your own society can you emerge the victor and create something grander; the logical and tempered thought of the lizardman with the creative flexibility of mammals. A New World Order for the New Age of Darkness!
You don’t voice this aloud, of course—you want this female to think well of you, to see your best characteristics rather than the beast she screamed to spy in her garden, or the forward foreigner she slapped in the waking world. As you watch her now, you see her expression crumple, lips pursed and nose scrunched with distaste, and you fear for a moment you have misjudged the balance. But…
“You’re right, of course,” she sighs. “I was… rather, ah, quick to judge YOU, wasn’t I?”
You tilt your head in surprise. She’s… Upset with HERSELF, then?
