Individual stones are not heroes - any

[sleaze]

I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies tell you my sins so you can sharpen your knife He doesn’t look too close at the other stallion, eyes his eyes on the ground. Some of this is his nature – he is not a fighter, he is weak – but some of it is because if he hones his focus too adeptly on the other, his mind may jump into him. The possession is like savage animal in Sleaze’s mind, and too often it has touched the minds of others, and he has learned terrible thoughts and secrets, has been made to feel like an invader. So he does not give it cause to touch this fox-eared stallion’s mind, because he does not want to know him in the ways he’s been made to know others before. Who were you praying to? asks the other, and Sleaze sometimes wonders this himself. He doesn’t exactly pray, not in the sense he once had – that faith was shredded on his quest, when he confronted death and madness and a singular devotion – but the words still bring him comfort, sometimes. When he can remember. (Not that that line - I shall fear no evil - brings him comfort. Instead, it brings to mind madness. A faceless tiger and the strike of a match. It’s a lie, besides – Sleazes fears. He fears so damn much.) “I wasn’t,” he says, and it’s too late before he realizes the vagueness of his response, “praying, I mean. I was…remembering. I used to know more prayers.” It’s a strange confession given to a stranger with odd marking streaked red across pale skin. He still doesn’t meet the man’s eyes. sleaze cancer x garbage