It's delicious and terrible, like poisoned fruit, she loves them and it's going to kill her and she loves them and she's going to die, because it's better than she imagined and worse than she thought.
She can see why the dragons might have predicted that she'd learn to tolerate the mind-reading. Their presence with her is so benign and tender and if anyone has to read her mind at least it's them, at least it's only this twinned-self who love her so much.
And it's worse. Because she hadn't expected to be able to feel it. She had expected to know she was being watched, to put aside the notebooks, to toss and turn before she could manage to sleep every night, to flinch at odd moments with the memory. She hadn't known that her own self-knowledge would be her window into the process as it happened. But she can feel her thoughts echo as they form, constant sensory confirmation that she's being watched.
She's sorry. She's sorry they have to have her in their heads, when she's going to be a creature of despair and a mechanical unthinking knife of focus by turns. She's sorry she didn't run for the hills and let Liselen chase her till the darkness swallowed up everything. (Or maybe she isn't. She'd have to write, to know for sure, and she can't, she can't, she's being torn open now but that doesn't mean she could hold the blade even if it'd lead to neater cuts.)
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She can see why the dragons might have predicted that she'd learn to tolerate the mind-reading. Their presence with her is so benign and tender and if anyone has to read her mind at least it's them, at least it's only this twinned-self who love her so much.
And it's worse. Because she hadn't expected to be able to feel it. She had expected to know she was being watched, to put aside the notebooks, to toss and turn before she could manage to sleep every night, to flinch at odd moments with the memory. She hadn't known that her own self-knowledge would be her window into the process as it happened. But she can feel her thoughts echo as they form, constant sensory confirmation that she's being watched.
She's sorry. She's sorry they have to have her in their heads, when she's going to be a creature of despair and a mechanical unthinking knife of focus by turns. She's sorry she didn't run for the hills and let Liselen chase her till the darkness swallowed up everything. (Or maybe she isn't. She'd have to write, to know for sure, and she can't, she can't, she's being torn open now but that doesn't mean she could hold the blade even if it'd lead to neater cuts.)