[P] Endless Sky

[Eik]

Dawn begins to break through the lush night as he focuses on things other than the passing of time. His mind successfully cleaved, one runs a finger across the jagged wound and the other plays with his letters.

Clem-
en-
ti-

"Why are you all hurt?"

The voice, feminine but bold, irate even, draws his attention to a rather disheveled mare. A traveler by the looks of her- though most travelers don't go out of their way to bother strangers standing by the side of the road. It takes him a moment to process the question, and then surprise breaks across his features- why is he hurt??

How... quaint.

He searches for the way to answer as succinctly as possible, but the words do not come easily. Bad politics, he could say, but the truth is far more complicated and ugly than that. His wound is the byproduct of a long and tumultuous history he had no part of. Just by living in Solterra, the burdens of the kingdom's past are his weight to bear now... Though not his alone, for what its worth.

After a too-long pause, he carefully chooses his words. "I paid the blood price for the crimes of a dead king." A small price for him to pay- others had given their lives. A look of regret crosses his features at the same time as a small, sad smile. He does not let his thoughts linger, although they want to.

"I came here in search of sleep," he says, amusing himself with the way his words are almost like a riddle-- he does not consider that a tired stranger would not be so amused. "But I could not see it in the dark." Now past her sudden assaults of questions, he focuses his gaze on the woman before him. In the early rays of morning all he sees of her is fire, fire, fire, and he instinctively tenses.

He does not have a friendly history with fire.

But his gaze finds the details- the tangle of mane and loose braids, the tired droop of the head, the almost childlike hopelessness in her large eyes. He softens in response, pushing aside the thoughts of fire and smoke and the smell of burning horseflesh. Again, he reminds himself that the past is just that.

(but it doesn't sink it, it never sinks in, because we know, and we can't ignore, that the past is not just the past. It is endlessly more than that.)

His ears flick back uncertainly as she asks her next question- it is an odd thing, for him to be surprised more than once by a stranger. He files this thought away for later. "We're in the foothills of Veneror Peak." He tilts his head, curious... He's been lost before in time but never space, never space. The nose knows where to point, even when the mind is elsewhere. And finally it is his turn to ask the questions. "Where are you from? Where are you going?"

-     -     -
There is no better way to know us
E I K
than as two wolves, come separately to a wood

@Moira eek sorry for the wait! I love her <3