[ In all his lives and non-lives, Douman has never once been severed from the one thing he'd believed inherent to himself: his connection to the balance of the world, the invisible threads and tethers extending from his spirit to every other thing in the living universe, their ebbs and flows.
The lack here, on this planet, feels degenerate. From the moment he'd broken the surface of his peat-soaked prison, all he'd felt is this absence, this fury, this hatred; revulsion has clawed its way through every inch of him, threatened to bare fangs in every stray interaction, left him feeling wild under the plaster of his affable smile.
(he remembers being in court, remembers the polite twitch of his mouth at every mention of Seimei, of his shadow growing longer the deeper he bowed his head.)
Socializing becomes untenable. Eventually, Douman displaces himself from the raucous din of festivities in favor of the familiar tranquility of nature, its laws familiar even in a place as alien as this: he counts the pulse of the wind, finds the susurrous rhythm of grass under his feet, the rustle of creatures too small for him to currently track.
Farther still, away, awayー
ーthe hum-whizz of an arrow in flight. Instinct has him tracking the root of the sound, long strides meandering until he finds the half-woman, half-mare with her weapon drawn, cutting graceful lines with the angles of her body. Douman barely notes the unfamiliarity of her shape; he knows what monsters look like, and she doesn't fit the bill.
So. He claps. There's a certain holiness to archery that allows him to allocate reverence, even if something about Douman always screams insincerity. ]
for 'warmare'.
The lack here, on this planet, feels degenerate. From the moment he'd broken the surface of his peat-soaked prison, all he'd felt is this absence, this fury, this hatred; revulsion has clawed its way through every inch of him, threatened to bare fangs in every stray interaction, left him feeling wild under the plaster of his affable smile.
(he remembers being in court, remembers the polite twitch of his mouth at every mention of Seimei, of his shadow growing longer the deeper he bowed his head.)
Socializing becomes untenable. Eventually, Douman displaces himself from the raucous din of festivities in favor of the familiar tranquility of nature, its laws familiar even in a place as alien as this: he counts the pulse of the wind, finds the susurrous rhythm of grass under his feet, the rustle of creatures too small for him to currently track.
Farther still, away, awayー
ーthe hum-whizz of an arrow in flight. Instinct has him tracking the root of the sound, long strides meandering until he finds the half-woman, half-mare with her weapon drawn, cutting graceful lines with the angles of her body. Douman barely notes the unfamiliarity of her shape; he knows what monsters look like, and she doesn't fit the bill.
So. He claps. There's a certain holiness to archery that allows him to allocate reverence, even if something about Douman always screams insincerity. ]
Wonderful, wonderful.