well any man with a microphone
can tell you what he loves the most
can tell you what he loves the most
Though he wouldn’t have minded showing Camillia around on his own, there’s a part of August (the logical side of him, the part that’s been trained and shaped to make him a man capable of handling such a sprawling empire as the Scarab has come to be) that’s glad for Katniss’s arrival. It gives him a chance to observe them both, to make a study he couldn’t if he were one-on-one host. Now, his silver eyes glance toward the big warrior, and something catches in the sieve of his memory.
A chestnut, a Denoctian medic, who she had been with often. And news of a death far north, though whether it had been an accident or intentional - or he the intended target, anyway - still unknown.
The line of the palomino’s mouth softened. Death had not touched him in such bold terms since he was a boy, but he still remembers the pain of it, a burning sear, a scar that still prickles on occasion (like now, in the halls his mother used to work and laugh and sing in). August knows there is little that can address such grief, but perhaps when he returned to the Scarab he could find something.
For now he only nods, brisk, and begins to walk easily down the hall, the two mares following. “I know of a couple,” he says, “though we’re shorter than we should be, at the moment. Terrastella is known for its healers, if you ever journey that way - I’ve heard they’re happy to share their knowledge, too.” It’s half a guess (August isn’t close with anyone in Dusk), but he figures from what he knows of those soft and earthy folk that his words are true enough.
He listens to the two talk beside him, though his quicksilver gaze remains on the castle as the hall slopes down and doorways yawn open down passages he can only half-remember. Somewhere, he knows, is a candlelit pool, and up a few stories is the sovereigns’ quarters (a place he’d only been to once, early in Reichenbach’s rule). He wonders how many new secrets the castle keeps, and if the old ones - a few secret doors behind old and faded tapestries, that sort of thing - still linger.
When the hallway branches off in two directions, he pauses, glancing at the two of them, flicking his tail idly as he waits for a pause in conversation. “That way,” he says when there is, and nods to the left, “is the kitchens. An important place to know. And this way,” he indicates the righthand path, and begins to walk again, “is the medics’ library, where they house the castle’s collection of books and herbs and other materials. They’ve stitched me up a time or two when a spar got out of hand.” This last is not quite true - the Scarab kept its own healers, and Vikander played medic for the most part - but August feels it’s not too far off the mark.
Everything could use a little harmless embellishment, now and again.
@Camillia @
