nageataidetara

'The men on Roke trust themselves and one another. Their power is pure, nothing taints its purity, and so they take that purity for wisdom. They cannot imagine doing wrong.' - Ged, Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin

In times past, when golems were still made of iron and stone, and Morrigan was still but a child, she asked a question of her father as he worked on the Forges. 'Father, why does the golem kneel and bow its head whenever it greets me?' 'As the golem tilts its head forward, what do you see?', her father asks in return, smirking, through the constant flight of sparks, from the constant striking and shaping of molten steel. 'It seems like it's...' She pauses to remember, and her red eyes brighten like the swirling embers of the Forges as she realizes the answer. 'Smiling.'

"...or some such remark, and I said, 'Is it going to be 'Mr.' clear across the Gobrin Ice?' He looked up and laughed. 'I don't know what to call you.' 'My name is Genly Ai.' 'I know. You use my landname.' 'I don't know what to call you either.' 'Harth.' 'Then I'm Ai. - Who uses first names?'    'Hearth-brothers, or friends', he said, and saying it was remote, out of reach, two feet from me in a tent eight feet across. No answer to that. What is more arrogant than honesty? Cooled, I climbed into my fur bag. 'Good night, Ai,' said the alien, and the other alien said, 'Good night, Harth.'    A friend. What is a friend, in a world where