Now knowing that Raum is here on the island, Eik should want to run. He should want to cast his magic wide and dive through the thoughts of the waking world until he found the skinchanger, and then he should want to hunt him down. And he does want these things, very much so. But instead he walks, slow and steady, and reigns in his far-flung thoughts. It felt like he was always hunting, these days. Always sulking around in one shadow or another, waiting for the ghostly sovereign of Solterra to show his face. He wanted to enjoy his present company-- their time together was always too brief.
What does a happy ending look like?
Eik wanted, on first instinct, quiet and simple. Period. But the more he thought about it, the more it seemed that attaining quiet and simple would not bring him happiness. It was the longing that made him happy, the wanting and not the having.
It meant Asterion's question was impossible to answer, for there was no such thing as a happy ending.
But this was not the sort of truth that could be spoken out loud. This was a secret truth, and it must be agonized over, in the quiet corners of the back of the mind; forgotten and then remembered, tumbled down the river until the rough edges wore smooth as a pebble. He did not have the right words for this truth, he did not know how to say it in a way that did not sound miserable-- for it truly was not miserable. It was just different. And it was very beautiful, in the way only melancholy can be.
Does he think for too long? He would say not long enough (it is a thing he could ponder forever, happy ending. hap-py end-i n g) but courtesy would disagree. “I think,” he pauses. Oh, to speak like the birds do, to let words flow without thinking, overthinking! What a blessing that would be. “For me, it would be just to live in a world where children do not die.” He thinks of the slat-ribbed girl he saw not very long ago in Solterra. She had dead eyes, dead eyes that looked at him and saw nothing. He thinks of Isra and how her innermost thoughts are painted by the memory of drowning. He thinks of the day the Davke attacked, and the bright-red of the knife he pulled from a dead boy’s body. “And no one knows what the word ‘war’ means.”
(And to be always near Isra, and the sea, and to rear children that were pure and wild– but that is a secret desire, and like a secret truth it must be kept close to heart, refined to perfection before it could be revealed to the world. To share it too soon would be to ruin it.)
It strikes him suddenly what a great shame it is that they should have an island to explore, a magic treasure to find, and yet it is such serious, solemn things that consume their attention. He focuses on their surroundings for a moment, feels the salty air wrap around him and smells the lush heart of the jungle. He shoulders the limbs of a sapling aside, continues to push deeper into the island, and returns to his thoughts. “Why does that seem like an impossible dream?”
@Asterion <3
Time makes fools of us all
