[AW] CIRCUS CHILD ,

[Eik]

She comes in and out of focus as his thoughts sharpen and then fade in time with the waves of the sea. For he is always coming and going, both here and elsewhere, that endless dark place where thoughts live before words shape them, tease them into something that isn't quite right but maybe, someday, if you try hard enough you'll find the perfect words. Isn't that what keeps us all moving-? Isn't that divinity?

(When will you realize you are neither insane nor alone, and everyone has their own gold-flecked hamster wheels to walk-- yours is just a little rusty---

ah, but marvel at the bits of gold you find, and hold your breath as though they won't come round again)

Or are we just bashing our heads for the sake of semantics?

(Doesn't it feel sometimes as though you belong in the world the way it was a thousand years ago, and you got spit out here by some drunken god telling drunken jokes and eating with his mouth open?)

'Does it matter?'

Now that's the question at the heart of it all, the whole shebang. He wants to say no, but gets distracted. Every time his attention narrows in on her again, he is half-surprised she is still there, gleaming, red, gold, fire- marvelous and untouchable. She tightens and relaxes again, he could only ponder the depth of feeling that flows through her, how one moment it snaps like a whip made of flame, and the next relaxes to embers.

He wants to say no, 

that you are who you are and the path before does not concern itself with the path behind. That is what he feels- that time touches you but doesn't move you, and the past doesn't change the future. And how you've been doesn't change how you are or will be, not really. But he doubts himself, sometimes. Often. Luckily she surges forward before he can untangle an answer. It is for the best that we don't divulge our philosophies out loud, crude and unrefined as they are. We keep them in that other place for now, the place without words.

"Aye." The backcountry mannerism slips out, followed by a tired sigh. There are a lot of things he could say that he does not- there was nothing to be done/he was plucked from the sky by a giant bird/I saw his bones/how the babies screamed when they were pummeled to death. It was such a rotten and ugly thing. Of course, in his escape he has run right back to it. Oh rusty hamster wheel... bless the day we simply stop running.

He wonders if and how her return is linked to Maxence's departure. Sometimes coincidence is just the end of a very long chain reaction that started before we can remember. "Did you know him well?" He asks, sensing that nothing could be pried from her, and god help the man who tried, but perhaps she could be persuaded to give bits and pieces away, if asked in the right way.

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@Rhoswen nonsense! <3