Losing too is still ours; and even forgetting
still has a shape in the kingdom of transformation.
Denocte was not home yet. Not the way Solterra was. But maybe no place would ever feel like home again, now that home was more of a person than a place. Regardless, he felt a growing fondness for the night court, and the more he saw of it the more he began to understand.
(the nature of shadow, the tenebrous heartbeat beneath the cobblestones, the curl of moonlight on sloped backs. understand?)
Near the Elatus, the yuccas would be blooming about this time of year. Dramatically, in Solterran fashion, they would unfurl huge fistfuls of creamy white flowers that shoot straight into the sky like a prayer. It was always a little hard for Eik, for any man without much faith, to believe that something so delicate could not only survive in such harsh conditions, but flourish. The tenacity of those delicate white flowers should not have come as a surprise given all that he had seen, done, and lived through, but still, for some unknowable reason, it did.
With the clouds thick overhead it was a very dark night, or at least it would have been were it not for the bonfires that cast a flickering orange glow over the crowded marketplace. The scent of smoke still hit something deep and fragile within Eik that made him feel dislodged. Like his skin was too big for his body. He ignored this sensation, as he so often does, as he trudged forward, deeper into the night and its markets.
As Eik steps quietly through the busy streets and keeps his eyes low, he tells himself he is anonymous. He pretends no one knows him here. (riotous laughter rings in his kitchen-sink brain: just because you don't see them looking, doesn't mean they aren't) As though no one has seen him walking doe-eyed with their (with his) queen, or the pale and dappled daughters running around like hurricanes.
The scarred grey stallion comes to a stop at a table of gemstone-studded daggers. To the left, a woman with milky blue eyes stares into the dark heart of the sky and waits for someone to come have their fate read. To the right, spiced cider sells too fast for the yearling tender to keep up. An impatient crowd is forming fast. But Eik's attention rests thoughtfully on the blades. Rows and rows of them, polished to a deep gleam. Like moon teeth. He doesn't say a word, just looks on quietly as the night moves restlessly around him.
of the circle, it draws around us its unbroken, marvelous curve
open to any :D
Time makes fools of us all
