E I K
he remembers what god whispered into his ribs--
"
who's there?" She asks. Eik tilts his head in the moonlight--
me--
He feels so weak right now, and so small lately, that he had not expected to startle the girl. He does not move, not closer, not further, but instead lets her look him over until she comes. So he stands at the edge of the water like a relic of a man that once was. A shadow, a memory of a memory--
pale,
but burning.
"
they're gone," she says finally, and the sleeping place inside of him flickers like a flame at the thought of all the injustice in the world, all the deprivation and wanting and unwanting. He is already so full of rage and vengeance, he can only respond to her words with a soft sound of disgust for all the ragged, burnt edges of the world, all the paths cauterized by-- by what? god or fate or circumstance?
She's not the first orphan, and she won't be the last, and his bleeding heart just keeps bleeding like it doesn't know how to do anything else.
(maybe it doesn't-- maybe even to love is to bleed---
stupid, stupid, stupid-- and, even worse,
weak)
He once would have said "
you'll be all right, girl," and he would have taken her to the capitol where they would find food and lodging and she would be cared for, in the sandpapery Solterran way of caring-- which wasn't the
worst way to be cared for. But he doesn't know anymore if she'll be all right, so he considers his words carefully. He does not have anything to give her, he does not know where the people he can trust are, at least... not in Solterra. "
It's not safe in Solterra right now." Even if it is
now, he thinks it will only be temporary. "
If you can find your way to Denocte, sovereign Isra will take you in." He still can't quite say that name without his voice going a little wayward with longing. The only comfort he has anymore is the knowledge that Isra is far from Solterra, but at the same time the distance eats him up (
fool). Oh, feeling was never so black and white as good or bad, happy or sad.
"
I'm sorry," he adds finally, because he too knows loss. "
What happened to them?" The question is out before he can consider if he really wants to know, or if she really wants to share, and it sits between them like an open wound growing rotten in the warm moonlit night.
------
@Evangelina
