like snowflakes from the trees

N watches silently (as he has watched everything, since Ghondor's birth) as Egil continues working. Egil is certainly not half as interested in him, the brittle bearer of what once was such a marvel of metaphysical engineering as Lucky Seven, and pays the masked moebius no mind.

In absence of a fragmented self to put paid in the face of anthropomorphized regret controlled by anthropomorphized fear, it's hard to tell what, if anything, will ever shake N's stagnant resolve. Those who were accepted into Origin as avatars, or the prephase of the same, ever to be suspended unaging but wearing, wearing, wearing, have come to consensus amongst themselves that the only thing to do is keep up their own good efforts.

Egil will not affix N with red eyes and lecture to him about the cost of single-mindedness, about the consideration of good intentions that the Z-groomed N no longer truly possesses, about the aftermath of slaughter.

A strange pang affixes itself in N's chest, instead, as he observes the striving honor of someone who was not even forced to stoop this low.

Egil's suffering and struggle was at the all-reaching hands of a knowable force, at the silent behest of a whole people and a soon-to-be-bygone goddess. He did not either give up; he was forced to turn.

Perhaps there can be another way.