Snekman II: The snekaning

Oh, how he wanted to gnash his teeth and strike this foolish woman down. How he wanted to reach out and just start yanking and not even stop until he drew blood, until he felt that satisfying spurt of arterial gore under his claws, until her face twisted up into something more pleasant to behold. How badly he wanted to force the confrontation, here and now. He didn't even care if he'd die; Yaksha was confident enough he could at least get -one- good blow in, and that was enough for his pride.

Yaksha even shifted for a few moments, his center of gravity shifting, his eyes narrowing...before he stopped entirely. He wasn't sure what had made him stop at first, but he felt it, somewhere deep down inside of him. It was one of those things he could've never put into words, but at this moment he knew that...beyond the consequences of losing the fight, causing it in the first place would irreparably mar who he was. Yaksha was a proud man, this was true. But this did not define him; Yaksha could not be defined by any single word. He was not pride.

He inhaled slowly, and when he spoke it was without any trace of emotion, at first. He sounded...distant, distracted, almost like he was trying to carry his message from a long way, and was doing his very best to make sure it came out as intended.

"Experience. Experience is the key, Mirja. I've outlived you, and many others. I have lived enough lifetimes to see civilizations rise and fall. But it was all...intellectual. Detached. I haven't been a part of this world for thousands of years now. I can answer very nearly any question you have niggling in the back of your mind. But it means nothing to me; it's little more than the turning of a page."

"I was a...big fish in a little pond for the first half of my life as a hollow, Mirja. I survived by shrinking my world down to the number of caves and hovels I could reach in under a day's trek. There were no trains, then. No cars. No television. I moved faster than the speed of information, which I know suspect might actually move faster than light in the right circumstances. And yes, I was...a sniveling, gutless coward. I would disappear like a gust of wind the moment I met resistance."

He took a few steps forward, his entire body seeming to hunch forward. It wasn't that Yaksha was smaller, it was that he was...less. He seemed to be trying very hard to shrink down his impact on the world, to compress his presence into a smaller frame. His words were more subdued, his movements slower. There was none of that languid, predatory joy. There was something...else there, now.

"I don't know how to say this, Mirja. I don't know if I could ever do the words justice, once they leave my head. For all my years, I am still young. I have seen much, and yet all of it trickles down through my mind, filtered through hundreds of thousands of alternative opinions. I have no room to be...subjective in my opinions. My memories are purified in a process much akin to alcohol; all I get is the distilled essence of information, what few nuggets of gold I can pan free from a hundred thousand eyewitness accounts. It means that which I know, I know beyond question. And that which slips through the cracks...I fear may forever elude me."

"I taught myself to read, you know. When I was a human. I had no mentor. No teacher. No one to show me how to make sense of these gibberish symbols. But I ached to know, Mirja. It tore me apart at the seams, realizing how hideously empty my mind was. How...narrow my viewpoint upon the world. I've always feared...misinformation. Rumor and typecasting strike me to the quick more thoroughly than any blade I've ever met. I was always and only ever the subject of talk. Dirty, vicious, biting little comments and interrogatives. Even now, I can't stop myself, from...wondering. Just what it is people say of me, when I'm not there."

Yaksha spread his hands wide, staring at Mirja. There wasn't a shred of pride or humor or ferocity there now. He simply looked vulnerable and old, twisted and warped into knots by passage of time. He brought to mind an old oak tree, incredible in its height and girth...but twisted and gnarled beyond the point anyone could call majestic, or beautiful. Something that may once have been handsome, and now was a pale parody of the same.

"I taught myself how to speak, too. In any of a thousand dead tongues. After I became a hollow. I've taught myself to subsistence feed. It's really not that hard, you know; dealing with the hunger pangs. Compartmentalizing. All it takes is a lot of patience. I've been around for so long, Mirja...and it took me two thousand years to remind myself of things as simple as...discipline. And temperance. And patience. And each and every time I lift these claws in anger towards another, I feel my control tested to its very limit. I feel my hunger swelling to expand, threatening to disrupt a balance I fought for thousands of years to obtain."

"I walk on a tightrope made of spider's silk every day, Mirja. And a single misstep, a single wrong move, will leave me plummeting...into a pit of hungry ghosts. This balancing act takes all that I am Mirja. When I was young...when the world was young. There were so few hollows. There was such competition, and the feeding grounds so...lean. Each and every hollow was regal. They prowled their territory like the king of the jungle, and they held their heads high, and they understood words like respect and reciprocation. A few of them were like unto gods, to us mere mortals. To this day, shrines stand to some of the oldest and most incredible hollows ever to have existed."

Yaksha looked down at his own hands, folded over his chest. He looked up at Mirja, lips opening, and...hanging there for a few moments. There was absolutely nothing this time. There were a million more things he could've said, a million more ideas he could've thrown at her. And it all would've been a distraction from the truth of the matter. It would've just been a way to deflect from this hideous, gnawing sensation at the pit of his stomach. Yaksha Dokuja had worked hard to get the grace and civility to speak things like this, and now he was being put to the test.

"Please, Mirja. Don't make me fight. I'm not sure I could stay Yaksha if I had to stand in the open and cross blades as you do. I'd lose...some part of myself in the skirmish. And I'd never know it was gone. And then I could never be...me. Ever again."