Spinch

“For a moment it felt as if everything around me stopped completely. Even the wind held its breath. Until that instant I had never truly understood despair, though I had lived with it my whole life. I thought despair was something you fought and died fighting – something you had to clothe yourself in madness and rage to protect against. But then, against all logic and decency, Brasti had decided, in that impossible moment, to turn all the pain in the world into a joke. You and I will grow old together and laugh at the day these silly birds came to rest in our fields, she had said to me. Hollow words, and yet their very emptiness left a hole that demanded to be filled. The sound that broke through my lips was harsh and awkward, like a man who’d forgotten how to speak, but it set Brasti off and he started laughing like a fool.”
― Sebastien de Castell, Traitor's Blade