There are days, after a long hunt, when he comes to the market and sells his wares. The routine, habitual and familiar, soothes him; but once the ritual fulfills itself, Ira feels overcome by a sort of emptiness. He goes into the woods to hunt—sometimes, for days at at time. Then, he comes to the market to sell the hides of beautiful, remarkable animals.
But after that point—after he has sold them—his purpose escapes him. Instead, Ira feels haphazard, and directionless. This emptiness manifests in many ways and different behaviors; tonight, he finds himself standing beside a statue in the city’s center, where he can watch the comings and goings of other Denoctians. This, too, has become a part of Ira’s ritual; he finds the constant motion and near chaos as soothing as his routine.
Perhaps it is childish of him to paint himself into their stories; into the quarrels of lovers and friends, or the elderly couple that walks down the street. In Denocte, he and his father had always been alone. Ira had trouble reaching out to make friends and spent much of his time alone, in the forest. Some time ago, Saige had begun a journey throughout Novus, exploring the other Courts—and when she left, his whole life quieted.
Ira doesn’t know how long he stands there before a particular man captures his attention. Perhaps it is for his brightness; the gold bangles on his legs, the thick necklace at his throat, or the gleaming rings on and around his face. Ira watches him, recognizes him, and at last says: “You are a soldier.” The statement is the observation of a quiet, watchful young man. He adds, a little curiously: “Why did you choose to be that?”
He had never been adept at small-talk. The fountain fills the silence he does not yet know how to, and Ira attempts to reign in his discomfort.
❖ Night guide you, lad — past those sorrow fields & sombre marshes to a kinder end.
R
enwick will be the first to say Denocte is the realm of the lovers and the dreamers, before he admits with a wry smile that is also the home of thieves and bards. It's the only place you can go hear romantics in the air, those gallant knights in their lordly steel — beguiling maids and their emerald eyes. Of quiet lovers in shadowed corners, their bodies aglow in lantern light. Of dreamers whose hooves create heart stopping music on old stones, whose silks fly around them in wondrous blurs of technicolour.
He remembers when he was younger, before he called himself to arms, to duty — to war. How he scraped his knees on these very same streets, deaf to minders who hurried after him. Frantic that they would be held accountable for Renwick's rogue heart and impulsive whims. Running until he was breathless, underhoof and in the way. Listening and listening and listening, until his ears were ringing and his heart full.
Walking down these streets now, inspires a similar sort of fervor. But he's older now, and the youthful winds of naivete and innocence have long left his sails. He walks the streets with different intentions now, different worries nipping at his heels, different senses in need of sating. Funnily enough, he'd say, the desire to get lost is still there. To run, and run, and run.
"So I am, lad." He says, coming to a slow stop. The smile on his face bright enough to match the burning intensity of his molten eyes. The fool and trickster both, trapped in a noble suit of armour. The boy remains him on the night, with the candle wax upon his back, an artists rendition of the moon coming undone. Her tears trapped within hoof and horn.
Certainly eye-catching, within a land filled with endless one of a kinds.
Why did you choose to be that.
That gives him pause. Perhaps if he was another man, he might launch into a heartfelt speech of defending his people. How proud and noble it is to give your life in service to a King, or Queen, or Court. To serve a higher purpose that exists beyond you, and will exist long after your bones return to the loam. Renwick isn't a novice wordsmith by far, his bouts in tourneys and long nights huddled by the roadside campfires give you both an audiance and time to perfect the craft.
So why do it then.
Though the other part of him — crafted in dionysian design — reasons the boy is just that, young enough to not know turbulances. He needs no syrup thick propoganda he never intended to impart, nor the world weary regrets of a soldier whose seen too much. This is not a night for that.
"I wanted to see the World." A white lie delivered with a rovers grin, he meanders closer, and closer still. Until his haunches rests against well-worn wood, props his foot as he often does, and gets comfortable. "Our world is such a big and beautiful place, and I thought I'd like to see it, in all it's beauty. All the pretty maids and handsome lords and roguish raffians. Rather than becoming a pot bellied dandy in my father's unfortunately gaudy manse." The image alone is enough to provoke a theatrical reaction across his sharp features, curling in on themselves in a desperate attempt to shield from the mental image. "Our people are beautiful too, and our heritage is rich and storied. But you never hear so much of those other places, save for what they think of us. So I wanted to witness them in their turns, see how they measured up."
The Brotherhood had been different that the regular Denoctian conscription, a legend in their own right. Of dashing knights and their roc companions, dark as ink and wine dark seas. Their star studded banners aloft in winter breezes, guarding fiercely the mountain passes and the old gate. Their faces prominent beloved cornerstones at tourneys and taverns alike. Only in times of great strife did they march fast and fearsome. Zolin's war had ruined their last great weyrs, struck down their mighty birds to rot in the sands, carrion for scavengers. They had dragged their dead home, and Renwick faced an uncertain future leading what was left. Recovery had been a slow thing, and he dared not push it in the after years. Concerned that life would simply swallow them up into the history books, no more than a mournful reminder of a bygone era.
Let them exist, and let them be enough.
"I wanted to be more, and so I am." He ends with a wink. "Why," tilting his head to spy the wares upon the table with a passing fancy. "Fancy taking up arms and seeing the World?"
His father had always wanted him to be a soldier. He had said, again and again, soldiers were princes with honor. They belonged to their country, body and soul, and not other occupation could ever near that honor.
Regarding the stranger—Ira recognizes him, of course, as he recognizes anyone who frequents Denocte, without knowing their name, only their demeanor—Ira is gladdened that he chose a different path. He cannot explain why Renwick evokes this gladness. So I am, lad. Ira cannot help the subtle arch of his brows at the term; he is not so quick to smile as the gilded man.
I wanted to see the World, says the soldier.
Ira listens, intently, to the voice that weaves itself into the Denoctian night as if it belongs. That weaves into the moonlight and laughing fountain, and the chorus of singing somewhere in the night; perhaps in the tavern, just down the street. Ira listens and paints the image in his own mind, seeing the world the soldier describes. Only, Ira sees it through the creatures of each culture; through pygmy dragons and sandwyrms and the mystic elk of Viride. Ira sees the World not in pretty maids and handsome lords and roguish ruffians; but in woods so dense they choke the sky, and a river that rushes with a fierceness that becomes violent, and a sun that melts the earth to gold.
He smiles, a private smile. “I don’t know if I believe your reason,” he says, a little coyly, to the soldier. And Ira says this because, at the end of the day, a hunter does not hunt unless they like the blood.
(And no matter what he will say in polite society, no matter what he will go to sleep telling himself, Ira loves the sport of his occupation. He wonders, briefly, if soldiering can be any different).
When Ira speaks, he leans just a bit closer; conspiratorially. I wanted to be more, and so I am, says the soldier, with a wink.
The unicorn spends a moment wondering what the other views him as; naive, perhaps. Ira cannot blame him. His face is so young; a trait Ira neither enjoys nor detests, but only recognizes in a detached sort of way. And his face is young because he is young.
(Ira has always found youth to be subjective to experience; and he, no matter how young, has experienced much).
It makes him feel older. He pressed forward from where he had been leaning against the intricate stonework of the fountain, his leonine tail dropping from the lip. “No,” Ira says. “I’ve seen enough of the world to know I like it here.”
He smiles again; his expression is far from the confident, charming expression of Renwick. No. Ira’s smile is a mirror of a crescent moon; as sharp as a Cheshire’s.
“I only wanted to know for the sake of knowing.” Ira would never be a soldier. He never wanted to be. “I wager I could show you more of the World, and the people in it, by taking you into the woods.”
Neither a threat, nor a dare, nor a challenge, but some mix of the three. People are only true before two things. Their gods, and their wilds.
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