"I've never heard you play," Iago refers to the ocarina at her side with a nod. "But I've never seen you without it. It must be important to you."
unprompted | always accepting | @accultant
"I don't play."
Her words are clipped, emotion held back by such old habit she does not know what would come forth if she let them through, grief or rage or mad glee; in them, too, is an irrefutable end to a line of questioning that has not quite begun, a definitive no to any careful prodding for her to play. But her hand goes to her hip, to the ocarina hanging from her belt. Long nails tap the hollow bone, familiar even when silent, without the hum of sleeping divinity.
She doesn't play, but she must keep it. Out of sentimentality, yes, but not for Ilmater, for the temple where she once filled her days by playing it for the ill and injured, troubled and lost. This goes further back than that.
She remembers a woman holding her leg so gently and humming as she cleaned the small scratch on the knee, a soft thumb brushing tears away, a kiss between the itching new-growth horns. She remembers a man picking her up and setting her on his shoulders so she could see over a crowd. She remembers a boy walking behind her along a long, lonely beach, stretching his little legs to step in the tracks she left in the sand. She remembers the same boy, older, taking her by the hand to lead her to his newest project, a flower he dug up from the dirt and put haphazardly into a pot expecting it to thrive. She remembers these things, and then the illness, and then the loss: they were snatched from her like kites with their strings cut off, and she was left with her half of the string, with all of that love leading to nothing.
All that time, all those years, she was told the ocarina would help. Her mother and father believed it, even as they died in no less pain than they had if she hadn't played. Her brother still believes it. Medael alone understands its futility. Magic can soothe a scratch on the knee, but there is no cure for the wounds of the world. The ocarina's silence is a testament to her belief. Its song was hope, and she carries its hollow shell to remind herself there is no hope left.
A part of her yearns to speak of this. A weaker part of her yearns to spill it all in one big heave, to let forth a flood of unwavering despair, to say out loud we are all doomed, look at us, we are all doomed! She looks at Iago, but does not say this. She's not as weak as that.
"There is a twin", she says instead. "Made from the bone of the same dragon, carved into the same shape to make the same sound. My brother carries it. I expect he still plays." And she can speak of her brother with detachment, as though he means but little to her. The part of her that yearns to spill the flood of worry and love and anger and frustration is small and almost dead.
