Ventus by Karl Schroeder

Karl Schroeder / Ventus / Page 326
round the things he had talked about today. Behind his words
she sensed a kind of...bewilderment in him, as though the
engine of human speech remained incapable of rendering his
experience to her, however precise the mind of the god that
powered it.
Nothing explained her fury just now, however, not even
the General's campfires in the valley outside. In fact, they were
rather beautiful...
She raised the long pin, and stabbed it into her left
shoulder. The pain pulled her to her feet--she hissed and pulled
the pin out, casting it furiously out the window.
There it was, the agony of terror and fury. It came
boiling up from some hidden source inside her, taking form in
blinding tears, as she curled around herself, holding her
shoulder. She tried to escape the pain, turning, turning, but it
moved with her. Slumping onto a stone root, she began to cry
in great gusts. There it was: confusion, chaos. She wanted to
run, run anywhere, and it was her body that was telling her this.
Run, escape.
Her body was afraid, it was her body which was speaking
in her anger at Maut, and in her fear of death. She had been
neglecting it, living in her understanding and within that realm
she had just accused Ninete of inhabiting: the realm of the
story. How could she fail to see in her mind's eye, the riders
coming through the gate, the expressions on her people's faces
as they ran from her, to join the other side... It was the story of
her death she had been telling herself, even as she tried to listen
to Maut, tried to see his images, his life.
She could no more escape into his life than she could
bring her death to herself here, now, by her worry.
She watched the line of blood move down her breast.
The pain was intense. She revelled in it, for with it the