[Kindly Prince, his Empire calls him; and in this eternal stretched-out moment of his death there is no greater kindness Illarion can imagine than to be held. Held by someone he'd hurt, whose bones notch beneath his spasming grip; held by someone whose blood thickens the air with the scent of book-dust and parchment.
It smells like Dusya's feathers. It smells like home and Court and flock and family, and the emotions conjured by those memories are real as when he'd first felt them--as when his own kindly Prince had held him so, and smoothed his feathers, and muttered words of reassurance as he gently unpicked the knots pillar corruption left in him.
The comparison is awful. It is apt.
It shatters Illarion like dropped glass.
He gives up speaking, he gives up and sags wholly into his God's embrace. He sobs openly, tearless and wretched and totally consumed by pain. Bear with me,his God says, and he doesn't have it in him to form words; to say, Lord, I can't; I've forgotten how; to do anything but be held and comforted and endure with dumb animal trust.
Eventually, the pain begins to become familiar. Eventually, the awful overstimulation grows adapted to itself. Eventually, it does begin to pass--and still Illarion weeps, low and injured.
(Dusya would have put him back to rights without pain.)]
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It smells like Dusya's feathers. It smells like home and Court and flock and family, and the emotions conjured by those memories are real as when he'd first felt them--as when his own kindly Prince had held him so, and smoothed his feathers, and muttered words of reassurance as he gently unpicked the knots pillar corruption left in him.
The comparison is awful. It is apt.
It shatters Illarion like dropped glass.
He gives up speaking, he gives up and sags wholly into
hisGod's embrace. He sobs openly, tearless and wretched and totally consumed by pain. Bear with me,hisGod says, and he doesn't have it in him to form words; to say, Lord, I can't; I've forgotten how; to do anything but be held and comforted and endure with dumb animal trust.Eventually, the pain begins to become familiar. Eventually, the awful overstimulation grows adapted to itself. Eventually, it does begin to pass--and still Illarion weeps, low and injured.
(Dusya would have put him back to rights without pain.)]