He dreads what they will find across the bridge.
He is certain it is no good.
This certainty is more than just a feeling, it is a foul sort of knowing deep in his bones, in all that empty space between atoms, swelling with warning, with despair.
"Toward the future," she sings (really she just says it, but the sun is in his eyes and ears and mouth and her voice sounds like a song) she burns (gently, gently, not even a simmer) "will you join me?"
It almost feels like someone else who answers "of course," as he nods tersely, skin prickling at the tickle of her downy wing across his shoulder.
Of course, he says, because of course there is no place to go but forward. Elsewhere there are bridges burning. Elsewhere a kingdom is being torn asunder, its citizens starved and desiccated, the carcass of progress cracked open at the ribcage and left to the sun and the dogs. He could not simply dream his way through winter, through spring, through war and ruin.
Even if he could, he wouldn't.
There are things a man needs to see with his eyes, hear with his ears. He could not survive without tragedy-- we know it now even as we keep our heart from knowing (-- two sides of a blade do not see the same blood) and maybe... maybe there are answers that lie ahead. Maybe there are even weapons.
(careful, now, best keep hope caged)
They walk side by side across the strange bridge and Eik does not say anything for a long time. His thoughts dance from one solemn subject to another-- the situation in Solterra, his last unfortunate encounter with Moira, the certain misfortune that awaits them at the edge of the bridge-- and nothing seems worth saying out loud except maybe "have you changed your mind?" but he can't figure out a less ass-ish way of communicating that.
"How are you?" He asks finally, because he wants to listen to something besides hooves on stone and waves crashing, and also because he genuinely wants to know. The question might have sounded awkward and mistimed if anyone else had asked it, after all that silence, but from Eik it comes as easily as one step forward, and then another, into a world unknown.
“I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow, the million moving shapes and cul-de-sacs of shadow. There was shadow in bureau drawers and closets and suitcases, and shadow under houses and trees and stones, and shadow at the back of people's eyes and smiles, and shadow, miles and miles and miles of it, on the night side of the earth.”
@
Time makes fools of us all
