Originally Posted by
grampagen
The raucous laughter gradually began to thin to a muffled choking sound, as if swallowed behind a cruel smile. Kinu narrowed her eyes, beady amber looking back at the lost boy...not in mocking, exactly but something else, writ in thin, weeping red lines over her pale face.
"Talkin' well ain't a gift, anyone can do it if they mean what they say, yeah? Pretty cheap stuff, if you don't really believe it. Better have the guts to live by what you say you do."
Leaning inward, she craned her arm over behind his neck and shoulders.
"Think of any ferocious beastie. They know what they are. Over the prairie or in the pond, it doesn't matter, they don't eat their own kind, then spit out words to try and make it make sense, they just know." The smile frayed into a blood laced snarl. "But where I come from...where I come from, the worst of the dumb animals were the Witches, Wizards and Magi."
"Little warlords and amazon queens, wannabe gods and idols, they'll ruffle their feathers and bark and spout off. That's a display, same noise as jackals or vultures. When someone else pins 'em and bites back...you get the picture, yeah? The way the Witches spoke their magic words their spells twist up the way things are. They make their nonsense a fixture. They built walls and called it civilization because it started with little changes like turning tin into gold, water into fuel, until the people the Magi lorded over didn't notice they were penned in, thinking the magic was meant for them while they were prepped for sacrifice."
Kinu seized a handful of Trevor's shirt near the collar, and squeezed her hand so tightly the knuckles popped as she continued to ramble.
"Then all of a sudden, what don't make sense, that's the law, a civilized game played by undisputed champions. But take it from me, the best way to get a wizard to doubt the power of his words and forget his magic...is to fold him like a chair. I know it, they...knew it. So did a whole lot of us who just wanted to live."
As the embittered words left her, a fracture split upwards upon Kinu's porcelain cheek.
"But when things have gone too far, when there's no way to figure it out and make things make sense again...there's no winning."