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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shayuri" data-source="post: 2635642" data-attributes="member: 4936">Lily unconsiously sat up a little straighter as the questions turned more probing; more personal. Her dark eyes narrowed slightly. Of course, she didn't -have- to answer, but there was an odd pressure to do so. A unnamed, nearly unconscious feeling that to back down in the face of these questions would be...what? Dangerous? Hardly! Duncan was no soldier, and the worse she risked with him was delays in having equipment fixed. Still, she could humor him."It's not really like that," she replies. "There's fear in battle, sure...it keeps you alert. Keeps you alive. But at the same time, if you let it control you, then you can't think straight, and won't last long. My drill instructor talked about fear as 'dancing with your brother at the ball.' You hold him at arms length." Lily smiles."I guess, in all truth, that kind of balance isn't easy for me. Not yet. But that's what I aim for. That's the ideal I focus on. It's worked so far."She shrugs, and adds, "You ask some odd questions, you know that?"Her answers were, of course, incomplete at best. She felt no need to tell him that she was of two minds during battle. One mind consumed with the thrill; the savage, bloody rush of apparently limitless power being directed and seeing men fall to it. The other mind was herself, sickened by the greasy sweet taste of her own abilities, terrified of dying before she could atone for her own existance. Sometimes she questioned this path as being the one she needed. A penitent, perhaps, or cloistered somewhere. But on an intuitive level, she felt that actions were what defined a person. She could live her life shut away, but it would prove nothing. But acts of valor would wash away the cowardice that lurked in her. Acts of nobility would stack feathers alongside the rank, dark coal on the scales of her judgement. At least, that was the hope she clung to.</blockquote>

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