inbox for saltburnt;

[guinegreer]

WELCOME TO THE SALTBURNT NETWORK

USERNAME:
G.COLCHESTERMOORE

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Comments

[guinegreer]

You're not wrong.

Ever since the commune, I'd much rather have someone hurt my body in all the ways I want them to.

[snaggleteeth]

I don't know a lot about that. Except it was a bad time for about everybody, powers changed. People died. Not you, I hope.

[this is even sincere!]

[guinegreer]

Unfortunately, yes. So you can understand how that might change a person's perspective.

[snaggleteeth]

I imagine. Don't have the arrogance to claim understanding.



Can I ask you a hypothetical question?

[guinegreer]

Honestly, I don't really have any memory of it, which is probably for the best.

Ask away.

[snaggleteeth]

You may not have an answer then.

Is it better to die alone, or in the company of someone who cared? Tried to stop it? Even if they couldn't?

[guinegreer]

[ she knows he's asking hypothetically, but the question immediately makes her think of ash, and the debate. ]

I'd want to be surrounded by my loved ones, at the end. But when it happened during the commune, I was sleeping. [ which explains why she doesn't remember the arrow that had gone right through her heart, doesn't have even the slightest recollection of pain before the end. ]

[snaggleteeth]

Do you remember going to sleep? That gone too?

[love is not—cannot be—part of the question. but he doesn't mind the analogue. he's curious about it.]

[guinegreer]

I remember going to bed, but nothing afterward until I woke up again, after being resurrected.

[snaggleteeth]

Were you alone?

Loved or unloved?

[guinegreer]

Alone in the room, but loved.

[snaggleteeth]

Would it have mattered to you, to have both?

[guinegreer]

It's hard to answer that. I didn't know I would die that night.

But I did know I was loved, and I suppose that made the difference on its own.

[snaggleteeth]

Love seems to come to you very naturally, Mrs. Colchester-Moore. You make it look very easy.

[guinegreer]

Truthfully? It's been years of hard, and we have to work at it every day.

[snaggleteeth]

What would it take for you to leave?

[he wouldn't normally ask. good manners are an important pretext in this strange world. but she just mentioned she did, so the bar is in a weird place.]

[guinegreer]

To leave them? If I had to, it wouldn't be my choice.

[snaggleteeth]

That's a lot of loyalty. Years of everyday work built up to something that can survive monsters.

[guinegreer]

And building a stronger faith in its endurance.

[snaggleteeth]

I've read about faith in this world. Seems popular with Catholics. Involves a lot of tests.

Is that you? Do you not find it tiresome?

[guinegreer]

Sometimes. But faith has to be tested, in order for it to become stronger than before.

[snaggleteeth]

I didn't take you for someone worried about breaking. But then, I still don't know your safe word.

[guinegreer]

Maxen.

[ given freely now, even though there's no way for him to know the context — ash's middle name, which hasn't been widely shared here. ]

[snaggleteeth]

Pretty.

Should they be pretty?

[he likes pretty. he does not actually think it would be a problem.]

[guinegreer]

They can be.

Mostly, they should be something you wouldn't normally use in the moment.