I am the pattern, the plague, and the prison --
There is a petty piece of him that grows envious whenever he sees he gifts that the mortals possess in this world. When he sees them control the lightning and stars. When they weave the water and the air. When they hold onto the powers that had once been only the gifts of the gods in his home.
When they do what he had once been able to—
and he remains empty-handed, dull, hobbled.
But he finds he does not resent her for her own gifts and he watches with appreciation as the sky answers her. As the stars fall down around her and then splinter above them. Perhaps because she is no mere mortal and even he can tell. Perhaps because she is the closest thing to the gods of his past. Perhaps because it would be silly to begrudge her the gifts that so clearly belong to her—and feel kinship instead.
“It is,” he admits, wondering at that dull ache in him. The loss having grown more acute as the days have passed, the feeling of helplessness battling with his own innate arrogance and belief that he would be able to return home eventually. “Hopefully not for long,” he answers as the arrogance wins out—as he gives into the comforting thought that this was just a temporary situation and the lesson would be learned soon.
He glances around them to this foreign land—even more alien than the common lands he had been wandering for the past few months. “Where are we?” he asks, doing his best to make it sound like a request and not a demand he would point at anyone else. “There is so much of this place I do not know.”
MORROWIND
