Just as well. Apollonia is getting tired of speaking around things. She is deterred only for a moment by the appearance of the small butterfly. Something strikes her as familiar about it, as well, in a way that slides off her mind in the face of something of far greater importance. (It's something that seems important to not-Mercymorn. Apollonia does not wish to destroy it. Not yet.)
"There is love in me the likes of which He has never seen," she says, the words committed to memory. She has scarce few that she can rely on, and this, these quotations that she's taken as holy in the same way as she has every piece of scripture from what the world used to be, is one of her anchors. "There is rage in me the likes of which should never escape. If I am not satisfied in the one, I will indulge the other."
This is a vague answer, another implicit threat, but it has always brought clarity to the red-eyed storm within her for as long as it has taken her to speak the words, and often for several minutes afterward, as well. Her eyes focus on the woman in front of her again like pulling herself from a minor fugue. She can feel, now, the heartbeat before her. She can feel far too much of it—not-Joy's atria expanding and contracting, her lungs filling. If she focuses, she swears she can feel electricity running through this woman's nerve cells. (But that had always been Mercymorn's specialty, and Apollonia had never once been able to come close to imitating it.) What's more important is that she can feel the core energies of the universe flowing in an unusual way. She narrows her eyes.
"I've told you a lot about our God," she says. "What is the last thing you remember of him?"
no subject
"There is love in me the likes of which He has never seen," she says, the words committed to memory. She has scarce few that she can rely on, and this, these quotations that she's taken as holy in the same way as she has every piece of scripture from what the world used to be, is one of her anchors. "There is rage in me the likes of which should never escape. If I am not satisfied in the one, I will indulge the other."
This is a vague answer, another implicit threat, but it has always brought clarity to the red-eyed storm within her for as long as it has taken her to speak the words, and often for several minutes afterward, as well. Her eyes focus on the woman in front of her again like pulling herself from a minor fugue. She can feel, now, the heartbeat before her. She can feel far too much of it—not-Joy's atria expanding and contracting, her lungs filling. If she focuses, she swears she can feel electricity running through this woman's nerve cells. (But that had always been Mercymorn's specialty, and Apollonia had never once been able to come close to imitating it.) What's more important is that she can feel the core energies of the universe flowing in an unusual way. She narrows her eyes.
"I've told you a lot about our God," she says. "What is the last thing you remember of him?"