[P] Man sieht nur das, was man weiß [Eik]

[Eik]

He comes here often. The crashing waves create the perfect white noise to muffle, sometimes erase entirely, the overeager buzzing of his mind.

(As each wave draws back, pebbles tumble over each other in chase of the sea, thrashing like mermaids. Giggling as only sea pebbles do, they laugh at him: 'all dreamers love the sea' before the waves swallow them once more.)

He passes the discarded mask without a second glance, mistaking it for driftwood and kelp. His attention is caught by a man with no hoofprints, who stares and stares at the dark and hungry sea. To the dappled grey it seems there are many stories in the curve of the taller man's spine, in the way it bows to the weight of time. He does not think he wants to live to be that old, but at the same time he can't imagine anything other than aging endlessly until someone takes his life by force.  Living until moss and lichen take him over and he turns to stone-- or dying in a pool of his own blood. He has not ever pictured any other conclusion.

See- in the long years before coming to Novus, Eik built his life around certain assumptions: a framework to structure his mind so it would not consume itself. One such assumption is that he will die fighting. But this assumption was born in a different land, a crueler one. His framework needs revisiting but the problem now is that Eik isn't terribly imaginative, and so he hasn't thought much of what happens after death. Or even what happens before it- the loss of sight, sound, memory, movement. These thoughts only come to him now as he looks at the man tangled up in seaweed with the moon gleaming on his aging back.

Each step brings him closer and closer to the tall and rickety stallion, close enough now to see smooth scars catching the moonlight and the outline of bones. Close enough now to smell the horseflesh beneath the heavy salt smell of the sea. They stand even but apart and it is silent except for the gentle cycle of the ocean- the crash of a wave, the tumble of pebbles, the crash of a wave, and so on. In the silence between sounds, his mind reaches into the dark, uncertain what there is to find out there. Uncertain it wants to find anything at all.

Silence suits him. Hell it suits everyone, even the ones who don't realize it. Especially them. But nothing in this world lasts, and although it displeases him Eik is the one to gently break the peaceful silence. 

(he has the oddest feeling, sometimes, that his choices are not his to make. All he wants is to be left alone to sleep forever, but here he is in the middle of the night, doing the thing he least wants to do. Other times he feels scarily alone, a speck of dust floating on the current of the universe. He does not know what is worse: slavery or loneliness) His voice is raised loud enough to be heard over the waves, but quiet enough to be easily ignored, if the older man should so choose- "Are you searching for something?"

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

@Turhan my goodness I missed writing with you :')