finite state automata

"I just hate that my whole experience with humans is just 'I don't get it' or 'I do get it - it's stupid.' Like, is there really nothing worthwhile? When is anything I do going to feel like...me?"

Some may have considered Aegaeon less stereotypically human-adjacent than most Blades - certainly, those Blades like Haze, or Minoth, or even Jin. They wore fabrics of human design and showed hair, skin, and nails all suggesting bones and blood underneath. They behaved like humans did, though some more stoically than others.

Then there was Brighid, who saw through closed eyes and burned from root to tip. Ardainian men, soldiers and otherwise, that sniped crude comment at her always waxed on her passion - wondering if it all burned, even down below. They sensationalized her nonhuman attributes, but maintained that of course she, like human women, was but an appearence-empowered sexual object.

Mythra knew that she had features many human women would die to obtain. The men wouldn't die for them, but might kill. And Aegaeon observed them all, from the posturing to the powerless, being invisible throughout.

"Do you 'get' sexuality, and find it stupid, or do you not 'get' it?" Aegaeon queried.

Mythra shrugged. "Doesn't matter, does it? Maybe a little bit of both. I don't know."

"You are permitted to be different, Mythra."

Nothing about Aegaeon's posture changed to signal this comforting, this validation. Mythra continued staring at the ground.

"I am no different than Brighid, though our appearances may make it seem so. I have endeavored to 'get' sexuality, and I find that I am unable. If it were she who could not, I would treat her with equal compassion. It is no different with you."

"Great. Another thing I can't do right."

"No question of right or wrong. Nor even of can or cannot. We simply don't."

Mythra peered upward, and found Aegaeon with his hand on the hilt of his katana, staring off into the distance.

We simply don't.

"And once you free yourself from that expectation, the world is an ocean of possibility."