He is smaller than he was upon arrival in Novus. Some combination of lack of food and lack of training. It is odd to feel small, when you were never really aware of feeling large. It makes you wonder what else you aren't aware of. Malnourishment, though it is a bit drastic to call it that (call it weight loss, but don't start a sentence with it), suits him, oddly enough. He was never a man of decadence, indulgence-- his joy was in the smallest, some would say strangest, things. Beams of sunlight filtered through the redwood forest, the first crack of the lake in spring, getting carried away in the rush of a new thought... or the smell of a certain woman's skin.
So he does not mind the way his skin sort of hangs on his bones like an afterthought-- for that is what it is. Scarred and simple and the shell of something deeper, stranger.
(How you love the word Stranger. And how we are all strangers here, in this always illuminated place, even when we aren't. You live for it-- you have no choice)
The desert grows on him, by circumstance if not true fondness. The change of the seasons helps- he is not suited for the heat, and likely never will be. He has explored much of the Mors and the nearby canyons, but there is always more to see. The landscape changes day by day, either physically in the shifting of the sand dunes, or visually in the way the light plays on the canyon walls.
Today it is the oasis he seeks- a calm, private place. He is only half-surprised to find that he is not alone. For all the privacy this place provides, the residents of Solterra flock to it as all living things do. He tilts his head, uncertain if his presence is unwelcome. "Hello." He says to the woman, remembering the way she danced upon being titled some position (what was it Seraphina called it? vocation?). He does not trust her beauty, it is the oldest trap in all of history. "May I?" He asks, taking a step forward, not realizing that he hadn't specified anything at all. Forgetting that the tilt of a head is not a sentence, and gestures are not words.
