[Vague impressions and thoughts bleed into the Communion between them whether they like it or not, just as everyone's hearts have been leaking into the heads of everyone else around them in the suffocating ritual chamber. Not thoughts that are fully formed, nothing like reading minds...
But something like a sense of sameness, somehow. She had always locked such useless thinking away, knowing nothing good came of curiosity in a breeding stable mare, but once she had become a captive in that hidden village in the mountains, surrounding by free members of her kind (even if they were mostly children and infants)... Had she not begun to wonder what it was like? The life of a jinba born into the field or the forest. What it was like to be raised by jinba parents who desired you as a daughter, and not by human grooms investing in your future sale price? Would she have learned the same things Matsukaze had from his father, who learned from his father, who learned from his father? Could she have grown to worship the Great Mountain as they did?
... It was pointless to consider now. She would never know, because even if she could return to her world... she would die within a day.]
I understand.
[She certainly has plenty of things she'd rather not discuss.
But she would remember the word "Nabatean". As a courtesy. And she would discuss herself just enough to answer,]
no subject
But something like a sense of sameness, somehow. She had always locked such useless thinking away, knowing nothing good came of curiosity in a breeding stable mare, but once she had become a captive in that hidden village in the mountains, surrounding by free members of her kind (even if they were mostly children and infants)... Had she not begun to wonder what it was like? The life of a jinba born into the field or the forest. What it was like to be raised by jinba parents who desired you as a daughter, and not by human grooms investing in your future sale price? Would she have learned the same things Matsukaze had from his father, who learned from his father, who learned from his father? Could she have grown to worship the Great Mountain as they did?
... It was pointless to consider now. She would never know, because even if she could return to her world... she would die within a day.]
I understand.
[She certainly has plenty of things she'd rather not discuss.
But she would remember the word "Nabatean". As a courtesy. And she would discuss herself just enough to answer,]
... I am a jinba.
[It feels almost wrong to say "we are".]