[ No creation of her mind would ever comfort her. She has scoured such weakness cleanly from her breast, offered it up in sacrifice to the hellacious need of empire and emperor alike, because torment has ever and always been her sharpest spur.
It comes close to being evidence that the stranger is indeed not her own invention. That doesn't rule out him being someone else's, or that, in the end, old weakness has reared its ugly head one last time to brush soft lips across her temple. ]
We were all sorry. It never made a bit of difference.
[ She lifts her head. She looks out at the sea. The butterfly flits to crouch on her bare skin below the draping sleeve. There is a husk of irony in her voice, a lonely, ruined self-awareness worse than tears, when she says: ]
no subject
It comes close to being evidence that the stranger is indeed not her own invention. That doesn't rule out him being someone else's, or that, in the end, old weakness has reared its ugly head one last time to brush soft lips across her temple. ]
We were all sorry. It never made a bit of difference.
[ She lifts her head. She looks out at the sea. The butterfly flits to crouch on her bare skin below the draping sleeve. There is a husk of irony in her voice, a lonely, ruined self-awareness worse than tears, when she says: ]
I am the Saint of Woe.