PRAVDA
WHAT IF I READ YOU A STORY CALLED ONCE UPON A TIME, AND YOU REALISED IT WAS YOUR LIFE, SPELLED OUT ON EVERY LINE.
It is a long moment before Pravda acknowledges his own weariness; returning to the market, with all the wares, intimidates him. He does not trust himself there, with so many enticing fares, and world of strangers with many stories upon their lips. Everything is temptation; it encourages towards gluttony and sloth, toward wanton abandon… and the bustle of the crowd was so much, and so strange. His homeland was of simple equines and the occasional pegasus. It was of quiet, humble people with no excesses. Simple, and kind. He had seen the looks some of the shop owners had given him—he was of another Court, and were their eyes not narrowed in judgement, in subdued hostility? Pravda takes a deep breath and continues his trek toward the marketplace—
Hello!
Pravda starts. The boy is there so quickly, or perhaps Pravda was so careless, they nearly collide. “I’m so sorry—“ whatever stupor Pravda had been in is abruptly shook from him. He would have said more, but the smiling Denoctian is already asking him a question. “Are you a water-traveller?”
The Marwari stallion cannot help but laugh. He realises, after a moment, it might have appeared rude and amends himself. “I’m sorry. No, no I’m not.” It does not occur to him to call them sailors; no, water traveller seems far more adequate. Pravda glances over his shoulder toward the ships; he is annoyed at himself for not thinking of them as travellers, and the fancy of it fills him with an abrupt and uncharacteristic whimsy. Where could they take me? he wonders, and then: home?.
His home is somewhere far away. The longer he is in Novus, the less Pravda even believes it is a real place. It seems as though Dobrodetel’Nyy is folded somewhere in the creases of time, timeless, a god land. He had never thought of himself as god-like, until Novus. But more and more he realised the nature of ageing, and evil, and hunger—things that were mythic in Dobrodetel’Nyy were very, very real here.
Pravda steals a moment to assess the stranger; he reminds Pravda, for some reason, of a night sky just on the brink of daylight, at dawn or dusk. His eyes are silver, and otherworldly. Pravda has never seen such eyes, and stares at them a little longer than he should have.
“I wish I was, though.” The fanciful statement is out of his mouth before he can stop it. “It would be a pleasure to go wherever it was you wanted, whenever you wanted.” The capricious idea is unlike him and Pravda is surprised at himself for admitting it. Denocte is affecting you, he thinks to himself, and clears his throat awkwardly. “I am a traveller, though.” He does not go into further detail, in part because he does not know how to explain it—is he a time traveller, a soul traveller? How does one explain that they are on their Second Journey, and everything is new and strange? He does not elaborate. He only says, “I am coming from the Dawn Court.”
He clears his throat, again, and cocks his head. Despite his intention of coming to the Night Court to get information about the political climate, he has been unable to work up the nerve to ask anyone the entire morning. “Do you live here?” And excitedly, tactlessly: “Do you know anything about the war with Raum?”
Pravda is not even aware of it, but his hooves are jittering beneath him with nervous, palpable excitement. This is why he is here!
@Pravda "speaks"
@Sirius
