The slow, nonthreatening movements, the assurances that he's safe...it's meant to be reassuring, he knows. It's meant to make him feel safe. Instead it just feels patronising, even if that's not how Death meant it. It feels like they're being treated as something frayed and broken, someone that needs to be coddled.
Death was right to expect the comforting to be ignored. Matthew says nothing in response to it, his expression stony and closed off.
But Nancy, at least, is now warming to the man. The way to a pigeon's heart is through her stomach, and it only takes a few curious bobs of her head before she's inching over to the birdseed, and tentatively beings pecking away. She'll fly off at any sudden movements, of course, but she'll come back to the allure of food.
"We used to think we understood life," they say, suddenly. "We were gods of the telephone wire, we born from life, we were power and light and magic. There wasn't, we thought, anything that we did not already know. And then...and then we became me, and we learned that we were wrong. We learned that we understood nothing. We were not prepared for how bright and loud it is, for how in every moment our senses are overwhelmed, for the rush of our blood through our veins. Because life is beautiful, and it is terrible. We would not give it up for anything, but with life there is...pain. And even if the mind forgets, even if the memories fade, the body remembers the terror and the agony and the horror."
"You say you want to protect life. That might even be true. But I don't think you understand it. You can't. You're only observing from the outside, like we once did."
no subject
Death was right to expect the comforting to be ignored. Matthew says nothing in response to it, his expression stony and closed off.
But Nancy, at least, is now warming to the man. The way to a pigeon's heart is through her stomach, and it only takes a few curious bobs of her head before she's inching over to the birdseed, and tentatively beings pecking away. She'll fly off at any sudden movements, of course, but she'll come back to the allure of food.
"We used to think we understood life," they say, suddenly. "We were gods of the telephone wire, we born from life, we were power and light and magic. There wasn't, we thought, anything that we did not already know. And then...and then we became me, and we learned that we were wrong. We learned that we understood nothing. We were not prepared for how bright and loud it is, for how in every moment our senses are overwhelmed, for the rush of our blood through our veins. Because life is beautiful, and it is terrible. We would not give it up for anything, but with life there is...pain. And even if the mind forgets, even if the memories fade, the body remembers the terror and the agony and the horror."
"You say you want to protect life. That might even be true. But I don't think you understand it. You can't. You're only observing from the outside, like we once did."