Completed Not All Cells Are Steel and Stone

[Maranae]

She looked at the stained earth, and recalled the men they had killed.

They had the same way about them as the ones from the bad place, the hole in the ground that she had escaped. Unlike those worthies, she was not the undoing of all of them. They did, however, represent the idea of villainy to her, though the word was perhaps too sophisticated for her ability to articulate.

Both groups abused others for their own gain. Both groups held only the moral compass of might made right. Consequently, both groups were quite dead.

Even so, there was a twinge in the middle of her chest. Regret? Sorrow? Why should she feel such things for such obviously reprehensible people?

"Why?" The word was slow, deliberate. She looked to the two men slowly with wide eyes, confusion and question both reflecting. "Why are they like this? Why take from others? Why kill with no need?" She cocked her head to one side, eyes gleaming. "She was made for... this. But not them. Why seek fight not asked for?"

 

[Ruslan Gildal]

Ruslan and Goffred shared a quick glance with one another. Neither man spoke. Neither man needed to. The questions Maranae posed had plenty of answers, some earthen and practical, some metaphysical and elemental. They could tell any of them. Let the words roll over her. But what good would it do? It was a knowledge which crept up from one's bones when it was called, always having been there, never for all the days of one's life departing. Maranae knew it too, even if she could not quite grasp understanding of it, and Ruslan had witnessed it. He witnessed it when the day prior when hunger bid her toward the bald caravaneer, saying in that low menacing growl "give it to her." But one of those many aforementioned answers.

To Ruslan, what made him press his lips into a thin smile, was that Maranae had her one observation completely backwards. They—the raiders, Goffred, Mama Bear, Ruslan himself—they were made for this. And Maranae wasn't.

So neither man answered. Both sensed, and wordlessly confirmed between them, that Mara had asked questions whose answers she was not yet ready to receive (or whose answers, the true understanding thereof, only came from within). And to answer would be akin to burdening one's daughter with a conception of the world more tormenting than enlightening.

"I'll talk to ya in a bit," Goffred said to Ruslan, extricating himself as he started to walk away. "Got to get these horses hitched up to the wagons."

"Don't let them bite you," Ruslan called after him, teasing. He pondered asking Goffred later to look at his right arm, but figured that, at worst, what he had would be nothing more than a nasty bruise. Right on the elbow. Did it have to be right on the elbow?

Back to Mara, Ruslan said with a small jerk of his head, "Come on. Mama Bear will be keen on departing soon. We've got time to make up."

Maranae

 

[Maranae]

No answer forthcoming, and being fair there was none needed. Perhaps it was willful ignorance that kept her blind to the nature of the world. However...

...some part of her knew the answer. The uneasy glance at the stranger, sometimes. The listening beyond the words. The world was cold, cruel, and peopled by many who saw their own ends as the only justification required for the evil deeds they carried out.

She watched the interplay between Ruslan and another of the caravaneers, and smiled. Much like a faithful dog or a child, she pranced round Ruslan as he started off towards Mama's fire, thoughts arrow-straight towards a place she had never been and a life she had never lived.

Maybe she would find a place. This road was long and windy, but she had the first few steps covered and thousands more to go.

"Ok," she said cheerfully, dancing as she did. Into a brighter future?

Maybe.

Into a future of her own choosing?

Definitely.