Work Text:
“Does it ever get any easier?”
The woman’s voice was surprisingly calm; quieter than Vehafor had gotten used to in the short time they had known each other. Used to the shouting and screaming and swearing and cracking of heads on tables, her long ears cocked in response to the tone of voice behind her. She did not turn, instead raising her head from a dusty tome to stare straight ahead, milky-white eyes eternally unblinking. There was a pause, and then a soft crack as the deity tilted her head.
She could hear the woman, Sukoi as she was called, sigh behind her. In her mind’s eye she could see her- dark hair messily tied back, horns that seemed to change whenever they met anew, and unflinching eyes reminding the god of her era’s finest warriors.
“Well- Does it?” Sukoi repeated, tone the same as before, if not a bit more forceful. Desperate, even. But that couldn't be right, perhaps the god’s ears were failing her after millennia encased in solid stone.
“By what do you mean?” Vehafor inquired, turning her chin over her shoulder to gaze at the subject out of the corner of her eye. A frown of confusion graced her features.
“Not dying. You're- you’re immortal, correct? Or at least you’ve lived a long time…” Sukoi swallowed, those unflinching eyes almost owl like as she stared. “... Right?”
There was another pause- long and awkward- as Vehafor wrapped her mind around the weight of that question. She had wondered about the demon’s past, had been pondering it for a little while, as she was unlike any demon she had known (and if there's one thing that didn't change in the span of a few thousand years, it was demons).
“Yes.” She finally answered, finally fully facing her companion. When forming an answer to the initial question, however, her tongue grew heavy in her mouth. Instead, she shifted it. “How old are you , if I can ask?”
Sukoi shrugged nonchalantly. “Like, two-hundred or somethin’?”
Vehafor nodded, then tilted her head thoughtfully. “Well… in my many eras of living; I was never really- I didn't form emotional connections.” She chose her words carefully- she wasn’t lying, not exactly, she told herself. “That's obviously not the case for you, though, is it?”
The demon nodded.
“It… It does, eventually. I'm not the best person to be asking that question, to be quite truthful.” Vehafor shifted awkwardly. “Gods don't make for good psychiatrists.”
Looking thoughtful, Sukoi nodded once more, muttered something akin to a word of thanks, and moved to leave- before the other stepped forwards and reached out a hand to halt her.
“How did it happen?” She inquired, her tone the same as the one Sukoi initially approached her with. This time, there was no explanation needed. How the demon had become the way she was- an immortal. One singular constant in a world always changing, decaying, dying.
Veha saw the flinch- small as it was, it was there. The stiffening of muscles when bad memories are remembered, when unpleasant feelings come to pass. She knew it well.
“I should really be going, I’ve got a sparring match in-” Sukoi said hurriedly, feet moving once more, but Vehafor interjected with a slight frown.
“If I wanted someone to dodge my question, I would have asked your red-haired friend.”
Yet another pause. But it wasn't awkward, no. A pause of reflection, weighting down the atmosphere like a stone.
“I don't know.” The woman said softly, and then she was gone, and the god was left alone once more to her thoughts and dusty tomes.