I stared at her silently for a long minute. She was growing more enraged every time I spoke, and yet she stayed. Was she trying to understand? Or was she just waiting for me to say something she could kill me for. I sighed, and shook my head.
“How many creation stories do you know of? Of gods, claiming that they shaped the world? I can tell you at least three - the Elves have one, the Dwarves have one, and I'm sure your goddess has one of her own. Each says they did it separately, at least the two I know of personally. We do not, -I- do not, seek to replicate the powers of the gods. I seek to understand the world. To hunt. We use the world around us, nothing more than that and our own minds. Is that not exactly why the gods set down? That we should fill this land and grow to know it?” I didn't know why she stayed. I had no idea if she was just - just what? Why was she staring at me so intently, why did she care so much what I thought? Was I not just a monster to her, an abomination?
I lifted up my hand, and pulled down my face mask. Gloved fingers ran along coal-black skin, tinted with hues of purple. “When you look at me, with just your eyes, what do you see? Am I a monster? For what, using the world instead of the gods?” I shook my head and tilted my hat back to give her a clearer view of my face.
She straightened when she was faced with what had been hidden, and her eyes glimmered with something of an understanding before she shook her head. “Firstly, you do not know how my goddess thinks. I'm her priestess, I'm pretty sure I do, not you. She has never made any claim on creation, aside from my race, another one and some trees. Secondly there many stories, culture to culture, but they vary in that manner because each race was created separately. Stories become contorted over time, manipulated, changed. They-” She huffed. “You do not look a monster, but what you have done to your body should not be. We live in a world where we know the gods are real, and we see them. Can you not have any respect for that?”
“Of course I respect the gods. I do not idolize them though.” I wanted to rub my face, but I also did not want to beat my chest with the chain, so I refrained from it. “But you, good lady, have not answered. Why is it so bad that we used things from the natural world to give our people a better chance of survival? We’ve made no pacts with demons, we have not grafted abominations together. I am still just as much a Drow as I was before. I'm stronger and a little faster, but I've no unnatural hungers, no craving to consume or destroy the world around me.” Was she just so against science? Had a scientist murdered her family? Hah. No, that wouldn't have happened - because a scientist would have just studied them. I frowned though.
“Have you experienced a madman, claiming to be a scientist? One who twisted the world and corrupted it? Perverted and destroyed it? If so - that is not what science is. Science is the drive to understand, to know and learn. What was done to me was done to protect people, not to hurt them.” I watched her carefully. There were those who claimed they furthered science, as they wrought devastation on the world around them. Perhaps that was the cause of her hate?
Philomel breathed in, casting her eyes away as they reflected disgust. “I have seen what science does. I once saw a plague that had been created in a laboratory be spread onto a land and kill everything in sight for miles after miles. Granted I fought on the same side as her in that war, granted she is now not …” she grimaced a moment, trying to forget the being that was Madison Freebird. The beast. The monster. Twisted and befouled, forced to become what she had never wanted to be.
“And I have seen the other side. I've seen a girl, sickly, told she would never be able to live past the age of thirty, given new life because a scientist dedicated twenty years to figuring out what was wrong with her body and fixing it.” So she had seen the foul side of things. But not the good? No wonder she hates science so much. But wait. Something - why did it seem like something was missing from her answer? I frowned as I worked over what she had said.
