Is it– is it magic he sees, taking shape above the stranger’s head? Or is it just a trick of the light, a shower of sparks airborne in the smoky, fragrant air?
Regardless, it’s gone as soon as the grey notices it, the illusion shattered or the sparks burned to ash, and Eik’s stranger turns with a slow look on his face like the light has traveled very very far to reach him. The man says “yes. I am okay,” and Eik wonders at the thickness of the space between words, and how it reminds him of the dark velvet between stars.
“You okay, also? Come you remember names?“
Eik tilts his head, shuffles the words around, wonders at the tongue and how far it’s traveled to end up here in the Night Markets of Denocte. (he’s full of wonder tonight, in the small spaces grief has overlooked) He thinks two heartbeats too long, just as the stranger had. “I guess so,” he says hesitantly. It isn’t clear which question he’s answering. And then, with more certainty, he says “I don’t know,” because it’s true. He doesn’t know if he’s okay. And he truly could not explain why he came here. It was not to leave trinkets, light candles, speak to the dead. It also was not chance or curiosity which brought him here– he came with intention. He wanted to be here, he just could not explain why.
(Grief loves grief, and the wallower loves the wallow. Sorrow was his lifeblood, that’s what brought him here, that’s what he doesn’t know enough to say.)
“Not sure I see the point of all this.” He shrugs– yet here I am– and his gaze returns to the altars. “Do you think they’re… still here, somehow… The dead. Watching?” It was the sort of question Eik would entrust with Asterion. But his friend was not here, would likely never be here again, and in a moment of weakness maybe Eik reaches for the starry-skinned stranger to fill his place.
“I’m Eik,” he announces, belatedly, not that it matters. He recognizes that they are not friends, not even acquaintances, and after tonight they might not ever see each other again.
@Sirius I LOVE him!
Time makes fools of us all
