I will not ask you where you came from

I will not ask, and neither should you

A hush falls over the mountain’s base where Michael stands, day in and day out, alone with the snow and the last few birds that are late to flee the oncoming storm. He can hear only the wet thump of a tree shedding its chilly blanket. He can see only the purple of a setting sun cast low against a clouded winter sky. 

From somewhere within rises a voice that tells him, you should act like you want to be here. From somewhere far deeper a voice adds, you should act like you’re alive.

He doesn’t really see the point. He doesn’t think that the ache in his ancient bones is because he hasn’t spent enough time in crowds. He used to live for them. He used to be a spectacle. He used to live up to this complicated concept of “entertainer.” But that was before… well, before.

Fine, he thinks.

Fine, Michael will go to the city. Michael will stroll through its streets with his paper and pen and try his hardest to put a name to this feeling of yawning and cold and nothing that plagues him. So he goes.

Michael ducks into the capitol and is almost immediately filled with regret. He is sure that in time he would grow to love this place as he has grown to love so many other things – he is drawn to the colorful and the enchanting, to the song of instruments and the glow of so many lanterns – but it assaults him before he is ready. The markets roll out before him, loud and vivid and full of laughter, and Michael cannot help the pit in his stomach or the panic that tightens around his heart.

His is the expression of a man in over his head, his mouth drawn in a tense line and the soaking curls of his mane just barely hiding the solemn sinking of his brow. He will be glad when Denocte is not a sea of strangers and customs that lie outside his ability to reckon.

This is perhaps why he latches on to the first face he sees that seems at all familiar, shouldering his way through the growing crowd toward Runaveig, who echoes the darkening sky. He knows her from… the meeting, he thinks. So few of these things matter in the long run.

“Is it always this busy?” Michael asks, the way someone might ask why the bus is late. Around them there is music that floats toward the darkening sky.