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If Shesheshen could have spent her entire life inside the nest of his remains, she would have.
He had been a good parent, and a better setting.
Shesheshen liked priests. They tasted righteous.
You said you were experts. Experts don’t need to hire bonus people. That’s the point of expertise.
It was always tricky, getting the hang of being conscious again.
Inside her chest, where humans put their lungs, she placed an open bear trap. It was her prized skeletal possession. It did not trap bears anymore. Instead, she kept it as a secret pair of jaws, for when people needed to be bitten.
The last thing she wanted to wake up to was dying.
For some reason, clutching at clothing was a classic human sign of being pathetic. In her experience, clothing never ran away from you even when a monster literally ate your head.
How Shesheshen wanted one of the hunters to stop this. For one of them to stand up for common sense, if not for the rights of a young damsel. A damsel who had offered them a perfectly good reason to get lost for a few weeks. But humans never stood up for the right thing. They stood around feeling uncomfortable, and later pretended that feeling uncomfortable meant they were virtuous.
And they called her monstrous.
It was some sort of love. Not the kind of love that made you plant your eggs in someone and turn them into a parent, but a kind of love.
A good predator was also a reminder, she thought.
It was the older families that clutched most of the wealth, even though it was harvested by the laborers. What the laborers got out of it that kept them from eating the rich, Shesheshen didn’t understand. She was a mere monster.
One thing she didn’t understand about humans was how they could think with so much stimulation around.
Yeah honestly idk
This revelry was a kind of fear, for hatred was the fear people let themselves enjoy.
Humans were so creative in their disappointments.
They shrieked in what Shesheshen assumed was another of the consensual oral horrors that humans called music.
No matter whether she survived this one night or a thousand more years, she would never suffer another handsy rich man to live.
“Fire! Fire is the wyrm’s one weakness!” Being burned was a weakness of hers, insofar as it was a weakness of every living thing she’d met. You could roast a sheep or a human on a fire and nobody called that their “weakness.” Having fire thrust into their eye sockets was a threat to them. Weaknesses were a human invention. They called it your weakness if they fantasized about murdering you with it.
It was eerie to feel that wooden lip against hers, as someone, for the first time in her life, fed her.
But the human woman was warm, and she was very tired.
“If I fell off a cliff, I’d hope somebody would help me.”
Nobody actually helped each other. That’s why people had religions, hoping gods would provide help where people refused.
She should, with that stuffy-nosed voice that had so much more character than typical human voices.
A noise came out of Homily like a nightmare god had decided to birth out of her throat.
Homily and Will Solace would get along
Mirrors hung on the walls, to trick you into thinking you were company.
Homily should come be unconscious with her, in their free bed. They could figure out how to adequately punish people for making it free later, after Shesheshen figured out why free things were bad.
Aw cute lol
Underlook had made a mess in their celebration of her death, and then used their fear of her still being alive as an excuse to not clean up after themselves. That lack of accountability was typical to humans.
Inside, humans twirled and flirted and lied to each other under the light of candles.
Nobody approached that barrier of empty tables, because they feared to go near her. They were treating her like she was monstrous. She was not monstrous. This was monstrous.
Humans were supposed to be able to find company.
Tonight he wore a black vest and striped overcoat, both done with bright white thread to show off that they were tailored. Untailored clothing hid its stitches, whereas this fashion showed it off.
Homily actually giggled—a smoky sound that made Shesheshen lose control of the bones in her legs for a moment.
Shesheshen wondered if wicker chairs felt this happy about interlacing.
It was funny, for once, to be the companion of the intimidating person.
What they feared didn’t matter to her anymore. Perhaps these humans had never met someone with actual compassion, and it repelled them, like rosemary repelled her.
Surely, this was how love felt to everyone. It only seemed odd because it was Shesheshen’s first time.
A rare person like Homily deserved to be informed before her body was turned into a nest.
Romance was awful. She couldn’t even do something as simple as murdering rude people anymore.
Love, she thought, was about patience.
Truly she was the one cursed by that family’s persecutions, and their apparent desire for her heart.
But Shesheshen had hurt before, and survived.
Skeptics should disbelieve in her. She scarcely believed in herself right now.
Homily had another way of sidestepping humanity’s penchant for complaining: enjoying herself. People could simply choose not to hate things.
Humans were seldom up to anything good when they burned things on purpose.
All the times she had looked at the floor rather than looked out for herself had been a habit learned at this distance from a parent.
Hers was a pain that made Shesheshen question what being a better person was.
Like smothering a victim, comforting was easier to do with a good grip.
Like girl I get it and I think people maybe are a little unfair but when you say things like this I think you are a big too monstery
“Your life has been hard, and you don’t act like this to them.”
“Philosophers write about this. I only do it to feel pleasure about having done it. It’s not a virtue. I’m not a good person. I need to get out there and break this curse.”
Breaking the curse is also not Good but okay
