Denocte pulsed with activity, a living, breathing organism stitched together from the tangled interactions of countless individually-motivated players past and present. Raymond slipped sinuously into the ruts worn by the memory of those that came before him, unremarked and unremembered as he passed shrines so carefully erected for the lost.
He commanded no attention here. The naked red of his hide jumped and pulled like yet more torchlight in a sea of burning embers, bathing the garishly-costumed cityfolk in an ever-shifting orange glow, just kindling to feed the fires of their revelry. A proper ghost would have drawn more eyes, as haply would become the form of his intent: this carnival of noise and crush of bodies was for the living and the dead.
Raymond was neither, and had no patience for mourning.
Why he had come down from the mountains, then, if only to pass unnoticed through the heart of a court he had once (and only once) bled to defend? What solace had he hoped to find in these cobbled streets and incongruous constructs whose very existence picked like vultures at the ragged edges of his wilder nature? Questions without answers - but he was here, and if you saw the weathered angles of his face you would read only a visage of benign interest, as you would expect to see from perhaps a foreign visitor willing but uncertain of how best to join the bustling festivities.
And as he passed yet another shrine, gaze averted in a skillful imitation of inattention, a dark dappled shape loomed suddenly and threateningly at the muscled curve of his hip. He arched instinctively, swinging round to face her in a fluid motion as his grey eyes sparked - first with intrigue, then with recognition. The practiced mask he'd worn loosened into more of a smile.
"No worries. You can't expect to cram this many bodies into one place without knocking a few elbows."
Would the mare recognize him? If she did, was it to his benefit or his loss? Did it actually matter, if he could not even muster the decency to be either living or dead in a place and time like this? Raymond didn't waste the energy it would have taken to worry. Katniss' eyes brimmed with a different kind of pain - one he understood, if he yet lacked the conviction to give it voice.
"What's the occasion, friend?"
@
aut viam inveniam aut faciam
