SHOW ME.
Eik flicks an ear, bemused by the request. These past few months he has turned inward, solitary. To help the stranger would be a departure from a routine that has become comfortable... he is not sure he is ready to let himself care about the concerns of anyone else. He was not good at not caring, and so he had to commit to it wholeheartedly or not at all. You open the door a crack and all the world comes rushing in.
But then the teryr casts its massive shadow over them and the choice is made for him. They should move, it might as well be in the direction the teryr is not. Eik leads the way with a shrug, moving with a strange, subtle grace that is not immediately recognizable. He does not like to have the stranger at his back so he walks beside the boy, where he can.
"you know this place well."
He huffs a wordless, affirmation, too focused on his steps to answer in words. They pass a particularly slick area and then the worn path opens up. Moonlight streams in from above, painting the canyon walls in eerie yet familiar shades of silver and blue. How many hours had he spent here, looking for answers in those patterns, pondering the spaces between quartz and feldspar and more quartz?
He could not say.
It doesn't matter anyway.
"I've lived here a while now, in Solterra," he says, although a voice inside of him is screaming (not long enough not long enough not long enough, not in the end, not to be of any use) and something is grinding at the back of his chest, like gritted teeth, like a clenched fist, like any unconscious and self inflicted sort of pain.
(another voice laughs too long, too long, should have gotten out while you had the chance)
In the end, his time spent in Solterra had only been good for learning how to survive here. For a short period of time he even thought he had learned how to thrive. But that moment seems so far away now, like a half-remembered dream that haunts you all the same. It had been foolish and naive and it died with a lot of other things under that hot and indifferent sun.
Really, all of Eik's softness didn't make sense in a place like this. He was not soft on the surface, he did not smile often or say sweet things or cry, but his weakness was there beneath the surface all the same. It was a private softness, an endless longing that defied his logical mind. And oh, how often his secret self came into conflict with the cruel and relentless desert he had fallen in love with-- he was well aware of it, and still he could never overcome his nature. He was a man born to suffer, and if circumstance was not favorable for this fate then he would find a way, sure as the sun rises, to bleed.
"Have you ever fought one of those?"
The boy's tone reminds Eik of the ones he's heard on Veneror peak- hushed, reverent, awed. "Yes," he answers, a flash of amusement quickly coming and going across his stoic features. He was going to leave it at that. And he did, for a time, as they weaved through the quiet canyon, but eventually something changed his mind. A memory, or maybe a wayward breeze that came up the canyon wall and escaped into the dim moonlight. "The last sovereign was taken by one. The sovereign before last, I mean." Maybe it was foolish but it always took reminding that Seraphina was no longer alive, yet alone sovereign. "Maxence." Eik had not said that name in a long time and it feels like inviting a ghost back into his body, a shadow of a memory of who the grey used to be.
"Where are you from." he asks suddenly, because for one reason or another he does not trust where the boy with sharp eyes is going. Magic prickles down his spine and he subtly peeks into the strangers mind, hoping to sift the truth from whatever else comes out that mouth.
E I K
grief can be a kind of music
that knows how to rise like the sea
Eik flicks an ear, bemused by the request. These past few months he has turned inward, solitary. To help the stranger would be a departure from a routine that has become comfortable... he is not sure he is ready to let himself care about the concerns of anyone else. He was not good at not caring, and so he had to commit to it wholeheartedly or not at all. You open the door a crack and all the world comes rushing in.
But then the teryr casts its massive shadow over them and the choice is made for him. They should move, it might as well be in the direction the teryr is not. Eik leads the way with a shrug, moving with a strange, subtle grace that is not immediately recognizable. He does not like to have the stranger at his back so he walks beside the boy, where he can.
"you know this place well."
He huffs a wordless, affirmation, too focused on his steps to answer in words. They pass a particularly slick area and then the worn path opens up. Moonlight streams in from above, painting the canyon walls in eerie yet familiar shades of silver and blue. How many hours had he spent here, looking for answers in those patterns, pondering the spaces between quartz and feldspar and more quartz?
He could not say.
It doesn't matter anyway.
"I've lived here a while now, in Solterra," he says, although a voice inside of him is screaming (not long enough not long enough not long enough, not in the end, not to be of any use) and something is grinding at the back of his chest, like gritted teeth, like a clenched fist, like any unconscious and self inflicted sort of pain.
(another voice laughs too long, too long, should have gotten out while you had the chance)
In the end, his time spent in Solterra had only been good for learning how to survive here. For a short period of time he even thought he had learned how to thrive. But that moment seems so far away now, like a half-remembered dream that haunts you all the same. It had been foolish and naive and it died with a lot of other things under that hot and indifferent sun.
Really, all of Eik's softness didn't make sense in a place like this. He was not soft on the surface, he did not smile often or say sweet things or cry, but his weakness was there beneath the surface all the same. It was a private softness, an endless longing that defied his logical mind. And oh, how often his secret self came into conflict with the cruel and relentless desert he had fallen in love with-- he was well aware of it, and still he could never overcome his nature. He was a man born to suffer, and if circumstance was not favorable for this fate then he would find a way, sure as the sun rises, to bleed.
"Have you ever fought one of those?"
The boy's tone reminds Eik of the ones he's heard on Veneror peak- hushed, reverent, awed. "Yes," he answers, a flash of amusement quickly coming and going across his stoic features. He was going to leave it at that. And he did, for a time, as they weaved through the quiet canyon, but eventually something changed his mind. A memory, or maybe a wayward breeze that came up the canyon wall and escaped into the dim moonlight. "The last sovereign was taken by one. The sovereign before last, I mean." Maybe it was foolish but it always took reminding that Seraphina was no longer alive, yet alone sovereign. "Maxence." Eik had not said that name in a long time and it feels like inviting a ghost back into his body, a shadow of a memory of who the grey used to be.
"Where are you from." he asks suddenly, because for one reason or another he does not trust where the boy with sharp eyes is going. Magic prickles down his spine and he subtly peeks into the strangers mind, hoping to sift the truth from whatever else comes out that mouth.
grief can be a kind of music
that knows how to rise like the sea
@Erasmus
Time makes fools of us all
