"I think we deserve
a soft epilogue, my love.
we are good people
and we've suffered enough."
a soft epilogue, my love.
we are good people
and we've suffered enough."
Voices on the wind. Ghosts in the fog. Everything feels like a bad dream. Michael goes to the mountain with his heart in his throat and he watches the market for days: as it packs up its celebratory materials, as it sheds its autumn skin. Each night the glow of the city dulls, and each day the visitors traveling back home slow from a river, to a creek, to a trickle. When he comes back down there is snow falling on the peak and it bites at his heels as he follows the deer tracks out of the woods.
Here on the brink of winter Denocte has let down her hair. The maze is gone and the ghosts are gone and when Michael reaches the gates of the city there is only the one guard at the border - one that nods at the gold horse as he passes then turns his attention back to the road carved through the prairie.
The market is not hushed - in fact, the sun is starting to bend low over the horizon and the Court is coming to life in the long evening shadows, the rising hum of industry that drones on long after he has ducked through the doorway of a pleasant but simple bar and pulled the scarf away from his face. It is stuffed floor to ceiling with plants and laughter and music - here, someone making a toast to the last of the festival-goers finally on their way back to their respective cities, and somewhere else a small but eager girl crooning away at a song about love and life.
Himself, Michael orders a drink with a tense but warm smile and tries to pretend he doesn't see the bartender's eyes linger a little too long on his own, but when he angles his head away, he is glad for the distraction: a shape out the window, red and black and graceful in spite of its heavy heart.
"Moira!" he calls through the doorway, beckoning her inside. "Glad to see you're alive. What... happened? With the ghost, I mean. Was it a ghost? How are you?"
He pauses for a moment, as the bartender places his drink on the table.
"Do you... want one?"
@
