august
It’s an endurance day, and he always hates those.
But he is nothing if not dutiful, and a part of him glories in pushing his body and mind until they begin to push back, in discomfort or boredom or pain or fear, and then forcing them onward anyway. It is well before dawn when he slips from a room in the Scarab that isn’t his, a scent he doesn’t wear clinging to his skin, more information for his trove of secrets.
Not that this one was worth much. He hadn’t needed to be told how Raum was starving the Solterrans, how the monster that seemed leashed to him could turn people to stone, how small acts of resistance had been cropping up across the desert. Still, the sun-bronzed trader had been pretty, and interesting, and didn’t cheat at cards, and it was always good to have rumors verified by a first-hand witness. And anyway, it had been days since he was touched more than the bump of a shoulder in passing, or the blow from a practice-sword in the small yard behind the Scarab. August has always slept better beside someone, even though he never stays until they wake. The only things that touch him in the dark of his own room are his thoughts, and they are always sharp, and rarely kind.
Now he thinks of nothing but each pull of his lungs in the cold blue air, the burn of his muscles as he gallops. It is a long incline, up to Vitreus Lake, but August knows the view is worth it. He is passing too quickly to take note, but in the long cool patches of white snowdrops are beginning to open, and in a few days the slopes will be bright with crocus and winter jasmine, myrtle and phlox. Already birds are singing, the mourning doves with their funeral hymns, the jays with their indignant shrieks. The dark shape of an owl glides over, returning to the forest after a night spent hunting.
By the time he arrives to the lake, there is steam curling off of him like he’s a cousin to one of the little dragons in the markets. The stars are still caught in the reflection of the water, though dawn is fast overtaking them, and the golden stallion picks his way down to the shore, pausing now and again to stretch, to pull in a lungful of air so clean and cold it burns. For a moment he closes his eyes, pictures his mind as the flat mirror of the lake.
A sound startles him out of it. His gaze finds the source at once, a stark-white heron taking off from the water’s edge - but the motion of it only serves to call his attention to another figure a little ways along the shore. Even from here, something about him seems familiar, an impression that only grows as August approaches him, each stride languid as a cat’s. There weren’t too many stallions around the Scarab (or Denocte) that boasted both wings and such an impressive spread of antlers.
He’s still in shadow, the bay, and it’s almost surprising, the difference in temperature as August slides from sunlight to darkness to join him. He knows he ought to give him his privacy - this isn’t the kind of place people came to socialize with strangers - but he’s curious, and feeling terribly alive with the cold air like a knife against his skin and his blood still hot from running.
“Hope I’m not interrupting a lover’s meeting,” he says, though his expression suggests no regret whatsoever. “Say the word and I’ll leave you to your pensive staring. I find it always works for me.” The way his quicksilver eyes touch on the green of the stranger’s then is almost as good as a wink.
we drink the poison our minds pour for us
and wonder why we feel so sick
and wonder why we feel so sick
@
