Once, when you were young and translating a book of old myths, you'd read about one of the very old creation myths, written back before the tyrians gained their stranglehold on the throne and the Empire, back long before the first Dysseu had crawled out of the brooding caverns and marveled at the colour of the sky.
It had been written by jadebloods, back in the days when each caste lived separate in vast, communal hives, and it had said that when the first eggs were sculpted, out of clay and grass and smoke, all trolls had been hatched with black eyes, the better to see in the gloom of the night.
It was only when a greenblood had cut her hand while sculpting and blood had mixed into the clay that the first jadeblood had hatched: a jadeblood, with jade eyes as pale as her blood, eyes that made her strain at night, but made her the first troll to be able to see, and walk in the light of the day.
(You don't remember the rest, much to your regret: it was one of the first books you'd ever done, staying up all day with a dictionary and a pen because you didn't have the caegars to pay for a proper translation, and you hadn't known yet to make yourself a copy of everything you fixed.)
As a wriggler, you'd thought it was an excellent tale.
As an adult, all you can think is that it was complete hoofbeastshit. Your eyes are as pale as they get, and the light of your psionics feels like a punch to the snout, even behind the tinted gloom of the glasses.
You're not blinded, but your eyes are watering as the sparks die down. You can't keep it up, even if you wanted to: your horns ring like you struck them against a wall, and Riccin's hand is still curled tight around one.
As you blink the ruddy tears out of your eyes, they have the audacity to ask you if you're done yet.
"You're going to get me killed," you say, your voice thin and reedy. There's a buzzing in the distance, and you feel the approach of the drones like a hoke on your shoulders.
[pheres is nineteen and the most passive character ever]
It had been written by jadebloods, back in the days when each caste lived separate in vast, communal hives, and it had said that when the first eggs were sculpted, out of clay and grass and smoke, all trolls had been hatched with black eyes, the better to see in the gloom of the night.
It was only when a greenblood had cut her hand while sculpting and blood had mixed into the clay that the first jadeblood had hatched: a jadeblood, with jade eyes as pale as her blood, eyes that made her strain at night, but made her the first troll to be able to see, and walk in the light of the day.
(You don't remember the rest, much to your regret: it was one of the first books you'd ever done, staying up all day with a dictionary and a pen because you didn't have the caegars to pay for a proper translation, and you hadn't known yet to make yourself a copy of everything you fixed.)
As a wriggler, you'd thought it was an excellent tale.
As an adult, all you can think is that it was complete hoofbeastshit. Your eyes are as pale as they get, and the light of your psionics feels like a punch to the snout, even behind the tinted gloom of the glasses.
You're not blinded, but your eyes are watering as the sparks die down. You can't keep it up, even if you wanted to: your horns ring like you struck them against a wall, and Riccin's hand is still curled tight around one.
As you blink the ruddy tears out of your eyes, they have the audacity to ask you if you're done yet.
"You're going to get me killed," you say, your voice thin and reedy. There's a buzzing in the distance, and you feel the approach of the drones like a hoke on your shoulders.