to feel that we exist, even though in pain
♠︎ ♕ ♠︎
He comes at dusk, just as supper is being laid out in the square, a feast for nobles and priestesses and peasants alike. Soon they’ll serve the wine, the deep and supple reds that Denocte is known for, and the sunlight-gold varieties of the desert. There is a clarity to the air that is just this side of a chill, and the new night smells of smoke and cinnamon.
But August bypasses the tables groaning beneath the wait of serving baskets. He spares only a glance for the crowd, firelight and the last rays of the sun gleaming on his golden coat, casting him in red and bronze. There is laughter coming from the throng, and somewhere two fiddlers are warming up, racing one another up the frets. All of it makes him smile, and if he were a more sentimental or older man his heart might ache with it; but he is not, and so he simple goes on, turning down the street that has transformed into a memorial for the dead.
The stallion is far from the only one here, but the crowd is thinner that it would be later, which is what he’d been counting on. A gypsy mare picks out soft notes from her guitar and the dark filly beside her sings in a tongue August can’t name, but that still sends a shiver wending down from between his shoulders. The music sounds the way the trail of moonlight looks riding the ripples of a stone tossed in a pool.
There are so many altars. Some are for individuals: August pauses for a moment at a table for Acton, slain a year ago, and considers a carving of the man through serious silver eyes. The space is bright with flowers, waxy and sooty from dozens of candles. There are loose matches and playing-cards. Settling his weight back, August withdraws a deck from the satchel he carries, and shuffles through it until he comes to the queen of hearts. He lays it at the base of a thick white candle, but whether it’s for the memory of the man who died protecting their queen or the golden woman he left behind, the palomino isn’t sure.
He passes one for Raum, one for those missing from the island - namely Asterion and his sister - one for the victims of the tidal wave and thunderbirds and all the wrath of the gods. And then he comes, at last, to a long table stacked with little candles, as in a church. Some are lit and flickering, most are still dark, and there are tokens strewn across the table, laid carefully at the base of the candles: feathers and coins, notes and gleaming stones.
August lifts a wooden taper, carefully lighting the end in a bowl of silently flickering fire is he certain is enchanted. He lights two candles, plain white wax, and bows his head. For a few moments he merely stands with his eyes closed, listening to the soft whisper of the flames, and imagines the smoke drifting on and on until it reaches his parents, in their kingdom of the dead. Strange to think that, if there is an afterlife, to them it’s he that is the ghost.
He turns away when he hears the footsteps of another approaching, and his face is smoothly composed. But there is still something faraway in his gaze when it slides to them.
“Need this?” he asks softly, and offers the still-burning taper.
@Katherine | for whoever you're feeling!
