inbox for saltburnt;

[guinegreer]

WELCOME TO THE SALTBURNT NETWORK

USERNAME:
G.COLCHESTERMOORE

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Comments

[snaggleteeth]

Yeah. Why I wondered if it's easier to trust people with your body than the other.

Is it?

[guinegreer]

Not always. But I think you know that too.

[snaggleteeth]

Disagree with respect, actually. If someone can hurt your body without marking anything else, it doesn't matter. Hardly impossible. The other way happens all the time. And nobody I've ever met has a safe word for that.

[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.