to feel that we exist, even though in pain
♠︎ ♕ ♠︎
If the unicorn told him those things his thoughts bend toward as though by gravitational pull, August would probably feel more comfortable, not less. After all, he knows a little of the way it goes - the screams and the laughter, the blood and the smell of it, the sick-bright sunlight through iron bars.
And the end without a goodbye most of all.
But there is nothing from the stranger and his companion, not even a response to August’s words. It is too late to be self-conscious of them, but rather than a man talking to a stone he feels like he is the foreign thing, a crass parrot jabbering away unintelligibly. As unsettling, the palomino has just begun to notice the way gold seeps from thin fissures in the stranger’s skin, like water weeping from a dying spring. Next he will realize it is the source of the scent of blood.
He’s starting to think he should have picked another tree when the unicorn speaks. It is old habit that makes his lips twist in a smile; here is a question he’s familiar with in various forms. Funny - this last year he’d almost forgotten he bore the tattoo at all. It feels like a remnant from another life.
“The servant’s kitchen of a gambling den, some five years ago.” Charon had done it, while Senna watched; August remembers gritting his teeth hard enough his jaw had ached the next day, and frequently flicking his gaze toward the auburn unicorn’s, hoping to read pride there. He’d always wanted to please Senna, especially then; he can remember the drink he’d poured August afterward more than he remembers the pain.
Now, further in time and character than distance from those events, his mirror-silver eyes find the stranger’s, curious. “The White Scarab. Do you know it?”
@Raziel | <3
