Aegis & Nau: Deep Conversation

Aegis sat on his balcony staring out over the vista his ‘castle’ overlooked. A new distant smudge on the landscape, he couldn’t make it out from here but it somehow looked like a mountain had sprung up after that hellish sand storm and the few days he was in his lab. Something he’d check out once he was rested and full.

Aegis tore a bit of flat bread and pinched it in his fingers, scooping some of the seasoned chicken, vegetables and sauce he could never say the name of correctly. As he took a bite the curtain to his room pulled back and Nau stepped through, but from where she was she could only see his back. “Master Aegis, the women in the kitchen told me they cooked you a meal you better be eating it and not letting it sit to get cold.”

Aegis held up the small bit of bread left between his fingers, and gestured vaguely so she could see that he was in fact eating. Then Nau came and took the seat next to him.

“The new girl is quite impressed with your skills.” Nau said, “She believed you were a god of some kind.”

Aegis coughed a bit as he swallowed and took a drink to wash it down. “Me?” he let out a small laugh. “A god? I would make a terrible god. What made her think I was a god?”

Nau gave her head a small shake of pity. “The poor thing said the even clerics couldn’t heal her, so she believed that you must be a god to have healed her hearing.”

Aegis’ face turned dark for a moment. “Clerics couldn’t heal her because she wasn’t broken.” he took another bite to keep himself from saying anything worse. Nau wasn’t preachy but she had her gods and she had her beliefs. And Aegis felt like speaking ill of either, even if they weren’t her gods was unfair to her.

“Regardless.” Nau said, “You have left quite the reputation in your wake.”

Aegis shrugged one shoulder, before taking another bite, speaking with his mouth half full. “Wasn’t my intention.”

“It rarely is, hmm.” Nau said. “You gave her something she lost that she thought would never return, you did something prayer, and healers could never do.”

“You know that’s why she was enslaved?” Aegis said, “Her family blew every coin they had trying to fix their child. They refused to see her as anything thing but broken, and when she was deemed unfixable, and not worth the cost they threw her away like a broken plate. A man once taught me about something called Kintsugi.” Aegis said, seeing a look of confusion on Nau’s face. “Fixing pottery and things with lacquer and dusted gold. Giving new life to something most would deem as refuse.” Aegis turned in his seat staring off in the direction of Zatar and Nau knew it. “That’s why I keep doing this. They aren’t broken things with singular purpose.”