I'm the hero of this story
I don't need to be saved
I don't need to be saved
Normally, autumn is his favorite time in Denocte, which is his favorite place in the world, which means fall is a near-constant festival of delights large and small.
Normally, he would be waking just before the sun (growing more sluggish as the solstice neared) to go on his morning run, then swing by the market to buy bread from Talan to share with his cadre at the Scarab. Some of the girls (Minya) always had an easier time with mornings when there were fresh carbs to greet them. After that would be a morning meeting with Charon, a check-in with some of the more influential (and demanding) patrons, a lesson in swordsmanship with Aghavni, and then a brief lunch before it was time to discuss the evening ahead.
Today he wakes alone, in a cramped room he rents by the night, and has no more money for. When he leaves he takes only his father’s sword and a small bag with a few belongings and the last of his coins. The air still smells the same as every autumn, salt and cedar-smoke and leaves crisp and bright, unaware they are dying, that they are already dead. But there is none of the old buoyancy with it, and the frost that still lays in the shadows does not look like diamonds when the sunlight touches it just before it melts away.
August goes down to the water, because what else is there to do? He turns away from the merchant docks, with their masts and gulls and broad-shouldered, noisy commerce; something about all those billowing sails make his heart ache with want and shame. He walks along the shore for a long while, until the city is only a suggestion behind him and the only line of tracks in the sand is his own.
Then, just when he thinks he might turn around, the palomino spots a curious thing.
There is a man, a pegasus, dark as a shadow and tall and slim. He is throwing something into the water, and when August draws near enough he thinks that the objects - at least one of them, anyway - are knives.
August decides not to come near enough to be really sure. Not yet, anyway.
“You, ah, figuring on getting those back?” he calls, unable to suppress his curiosity. There is something in him that identifies at once with the concept of it - because there is something in him that feels just as sharp, and just as useless, as a knife thrown into the sea.
@Caine I did it
