[prompt] if you were a king up there on your throne
I don't understand.
Don't tell.
Words are important - words tell the world what it is. The world is small and petty and afraid; it's a secret that he keeps, buried under I understand and I chose this. Tell the world what it is. Lie to it. Reality is perception; words shape it. This is magic any fool can use, and Martel's not (usually) a fool. He cultivates perception of himself with clever application of creative truths. Where secrets of his past could get him killed (again), honest renders him something close to harmless. Sabotage is the affair of secrets and secret-keepers; Martel is common knowledge.
He understands this. It's simple, it's practical, and it's (evidently admirably) manipulative. He knows this, this simple magic of living in other minds.
He understands setting goals and accomplishing them; what he doesn't understand is a life that goes on after the endgame he didn't live through. He doesn't understand having something left out of the ashes of nothing at all. He doesn't understand how Maria can laugh, how Candice can trust him, how he found himself with a staffed estate, friends, family, how dead men live and good men just die. He doesn't understand one breath following another when he can feel the blood in his lungs when he's quiet and alone.
You tell the world what it is; Martel tells it mine.
prompt: i don't understand, #259
word count: 230