The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.
She refuses to hear him, instead choosing to take her temper out on one who simply saw more for her and voiced that opinion. To have an opinion seemed to be more dangerous than he even first postulated. It is taken as bantering, as preaching, and if he had known that sharing his thoughts with her would have instigated a tantrum, worse even than his own initial one, he might have kept it all to himself and vanished from her life without the trouble. She was not yet four, he was not yet done teaching, but it would have made him leave in any case.
His hesitation to be touched is taken even worse.
She bares her teeth at him. She does as she claims he had by condemning him for… condemning her religion. Had he, though? Had he done anything more than told her that she was meant to be greater, to follow a higher calling? That she could do more, be more, than a simple worshiper of a religion? Then she assumes that she had spoken in such a way that implied anything about debate. What she had said had amounted to that he would be heard, but that her word was the law. It had seemed lopsided to say such a thing, but he wonders now if she is too rigid to hear that from him.
Then his ears truly flatten as she accuses him of preposterous things about killing and sparing - a thing he had never spoken of to her. She babbles about some broken good and evil and the balance - another concept utterly foreign between them.
Oh, he was well aware her tongue had run away with her.
“When have I subjugated you? I have made requests and offers but I’ve never sought for you to bow in submission under my paws or grovel like a starving pup at its mother's teat or jaws.”
He bares his own teeth, seeing her try to avoid the fact that her words had implied and that he had merely taken meaning from it. “You are right, I am no pup and you could not have made me bow. What I spoke of was how your words were interpreted - not what words you openly spoke.” But she is off again and she talks about his making her bow and acting as if she had no flaw or weakness.
“You would be naive, Sekhmet, to think that apologizing requires groveling. Did I not apologize unequivocally for my outburst without hesitation when I saw I was in the wrong? Are you so much better than I that you can say you do not need to apologize when you have also done something to another?”
She growls, but he remains sitting because he can see she struggles against a nature that is almost too undisciplined to allow for reasonable speech in the present time. He will not be the one to provoke violence here, though he is more than ready to answer any violence with more of the same. “You are purposely being obtuse about what I have told you about what you could become, you must be. You lash out at me because you are unhappy that I know you are greater than whatever faith you have come to know in this place.”
Again he tells her she is worthy of more, and again she seems to stunt herself by insisting he is wrong, that he is closed-minded, and it is wearying to sit and try and convince a goddess that she is not a flea. Her potential insult about weak-minded, though he couldn’t quite understand it and he chocked it up to simple misuse of her new language, is followed by her look of disappointment and more accusations.
“I was expecting you to be by my side. For you to state your beliefs and trust that I wouldn’t condemn but defend them as well as what I found for myself. I would heed your advice but hope you would trust me to what I felt was right.”
He had not even been able to voice his beliefs thus far without condemnation anyway. Condemnation that he was belittling hers by believing in something greater for her. Then she is walking away from him and he does not rise to chase her, he would not when she was not truly living by the words she spoke. Hadn’t she told him once that actions spoke louder than words? Then she stands there, like a youth sulking over an idea proposed and not accepted with blind adoration.
“Have you quite done, then?” He sounds tired, weighted down by disappointment and exasperation. She expected him to agree to things without knowing her beliefs beyond that she was now a slave to mortal protocol that was well beneath her. How could he think it good enough for her? It would not have been good enough for him. He is glad that he is old enough to stop a tantrum before it turned him into what she had just exposed, even if he was still susceptible to beginning one anyway.
“I try to raise you above petty mortal concern and you push me away to settle for less than you deserve. If you do not want to reach the potential I see, I cannot make you. But I do not accept being accused and condemned for believing you better than where you have placed yourself.” It is his turn for his eyes to turn cold, this new anger one of a person who had been wronged. “If you walk from here now, I will cut whatever ties with you I had once thought were there. But, since it is clear what you think of myself and what you think of my opinions, perhaps it is better that you not be my student any longer.”
His voice deepens, “I find I value you too much and against my usual way of forsaking attachment. I will not put myself through this pain if I am so undervalued by the focus of that affection.” She could walk away, turn her back on him like this, but he was no young fool to go plodding along mindlessly after the heels of one who did not treat him with the respect due to a teacher, much less an equal.
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