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Draugr is by me!
She belonged to Eris, Draugr said. But she is Salvia's now. A slave, the woman said, dismissively. It would not do to allow any of Salsola to understand her feelings toward slaves. She accepted their social position, naturally -- for if they truly valued freedom, they would run, or walk to the edge of the cliffs and cast themselves into the sea -- but she also thought perhaps it was a taboo to think as she did about their minds. There was usefulness in a slave's ideas and intelligence, at times -- Draugr herself imagined someday owning a slave with sharp perceptiveness and a wonderful education. But such a slave, she also thought, would be smart enough to reason out her thinking: leave or die. She supposed it depended on what value they placed on freedom. Draugr, for her part, would never have accepted the yolk of slavery: she was a daughter of the Hearg and a völva. Greatness lingered in her bloodline. Ataxia and I used to make trouble for her.
Even as she dug, the wolfdog listened in earnest to the tawny coyote. He was her senior by a year or more, and he had held his Confidant rank the entirety of the time she'd known of him (she was unaware of any previous rankings). More than that, though, it interested her to know there was similarity to herself in the world. Observing was a large part of what Draugr did. She had done so as a Bambino and still as an Associate, observing the Salsolian world and culture. It was jarringly different from what mother had presented her as a child, and so she felt she must understand it wholly and completely before interacting with it. The next part of his words, however, struck her as strange, enough so that she paused in her digging, several holes before him and his loading of the stones into the shallow hole.
All I want in the world is improvement, she said, holding the shovel so its point hovered above the ground. She looked down at its handle and ran her fingers over it. A splinter disengaged and embedded itself shallowly in the pad of her paw, so slightly she did not even feel its point jabbing her flesh. I wanted to be better, as a child. I knew I was not as good as the adults, and so I did not play -- I tried to be an adult. She had pored over whatever things she could find to observe, be it the earth beneath her feet, the falling rain and clouds, or the skittering and crawling creatures of the forest. There is no such want in you? she asked, hesitantly. Perhaps I am the strange one, she added, returning quickly to her digging. She spared a fleeting glance at him and seemed to concentrate on her digging.
She did not know if her desires were normal: many seemed to want love, many more seemed to want rank. Draugr did not care for love -- she had her mother's love, and loved Siv in return. She needed no other. Rank was good only in that it was a very literal and very strong reminder of one's improvement: with greater rank, usually, meant greater achievement. While the woody-hued canid hard her vague doubts about this pack's system of rank and fairness, there was still faith in it. Her indoctrination, too, had worked well. She trusted no outsiders, and no other pack seemed worthy of even a moment of her hime. Salsola was the center of her world, and while that center had its flaws and required improvement as anything else, it was her world.
The depth of this conversation intimidated her, though she did not quite know why. She worked diligently to conceal that feeling, immersing herself in the digging and then, pacing behind the tawny coyote to smooth and perfect the dirt around the stones.
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