to feel that we exist, even though in pain
♠︎ ♕ ♠︎
Summer might be over in Solterra, but nobody told the weather.
It’s a dog-hot day, with clouds only a low haze at the rim of the horizon and the sun a baleful eye. Shadows flee beneath doors, and there is no wind in the city to stir the draped fabric in the markets or the sails of ships at harbor. The air is still and stale in his one-room rental, and it only takes him a few moments on the city streets to decide that he will have better luck finding a breeze outside the gates.
August might be a fool, but he is not so foolish to think it’s a good day to wander the desert. Instead he tracks due east, toward the oasis, though he’s never been there before and hopes he does not wind up lost. It does not seem like such a far-off possibility that he might never find civilization again, and a year from now someone might find a heap of bones (jackal-gnawed at the edges) and the slim ring from his nose in a neat pile at the bottom of a dune.
This is not a future he would choose for himself, so he takes care to pay attention to where he’s walking, and is rewarded an hour or so on when he sees a patch of green like an inkblot on the horizon. It does, in fact, look like a mirage, heat-shimmer and all, but resolves into a surprising Eden of greenery and water.
He goes to the water first, and drinks long until his throat and mind feel as cool and clear as the spring. Then he turns to a palm tree, and starts minutely at the two shadows beneath it, man and dog, both large and dark and rigid.
Maybe the heat has addled him, or maybe his curiosity just always outweighs his sense of late; either way, August hesitates only a moment before walking toward them, coat a golden sheen with sweat, posture easy and relaxed. “Is there room for another under there?” he asks, and answers his own question by stepping into the shade.
Only when his eyes adjust to it and he gets his first real sense of hound and stallion does he rethink his cavalier approach, but he summons a smile anyway. “What a marvel,” he says, but doesn’t specify the subject of his admiration.
@Raziel | <3
