:] no worries. 300+
The dark chestnut girl was not hugely younger than Caspa, but there was a world between the two in spirit. Six months did make a difference, of course, but then there was the dog's solemnity opposed to her new acquaintance's playful-seeming behaviour, biting herself on the paw, and laughing. Caspa shot her a benign frown. "That might be imaginary pain." But it was a pointless argument, really. Reality was what you made it, so what did it matter if you couldn't prove its existence - even if everything in the world, every sensation, was just a creation of your own mind - so what? It didn't change anything. What changed things for Caspa, what brought her to a world that really was ethereal and ghostlike - removed her from her own mind - was the kind of trance she had recently been in. And see, she thought, how you can at least affect your own reality. This friendly wolf could have so easily been a marauder or a predator. Instead, she is calling me friend. I may as well have invented her to please myself, the perfect companion to have on a peaceful morning like this.
As the sun's rays were growing stronger, she tugged the shawl from her shoulders, spreading it on the rock and then sitting back down on it, still facing the sunrise with legs crossed as if following an unspoken rule. It was only then, with a deep sigh, and a niggling thought at the back of her mind telling her that the way her vision was going blurry was not good, that she answered Blind's question. "Forever. Forever and ever." A spirit did not die, according to what she'd learned recently: it merely cycled through different forms. She - and everybody - had walked the earth since the beginning of time. "Caspa - that's me - has only been here since the spring before last, though." A deep-set section of her mind was amused at her wilful ignorance of Blind's meaning, but it did not show in that serene expression.
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