EIK
OF UNBECOMING AND UNBELONGING
*
Eik had always been a different kind of man, never quite at home in any one place. Now that he is back in the city he so loves, he recognizes that, at least for Solterra, this is because he does not feel worthy of this place-- not least of all because he left.
How could he possibly look at a true Solterran, born and bred, and say “I am from here too”? Love and belonging were not contingent on each other; Solterra owed him nothing. Here or Denocte or anywhere in Novus, Eik would always be other. And yes, he thinks about this a lot for someone who has made peace with finding a place to belong. He has a small family and a peaceful space in the wilds and a few dear friends by which to measure the passage of time. (remember when we met, before all this madness that too has come and gone.)
He knows better than to ask for more. Yet he wonders, oh he wonders, sometimes, what things could have been like...
It is enough (it must be enough) to be here now, alongside a friend gone and returned, and look back on how far he’s come, and begin to accept the limits of how far he might go. This last one hurts, but he was never one to complain.
“Oh I doubt you'd last a single summer,” Eik says, only half in jest. The summer heat was terrible, but not unbearable. Moreover, it was impossible to begin to understand the Solterran people without living through the worst of it with them. Intense heat shaped metal, cooked and baked food, cleaned water and wounds... it touched people, too, and changed them in ways that were not always irrevocable. Asterion might as well experience it, at least once.
The grey had always admired his friend's skill with words. When Asterion speaks of returning to Terrastella, of wounds healed and opened, Eik understands. He can tell there is shame there, and hurt, and perhaps the ache that comes with a lack of resolution. “You’re always welcome to stay with us. We don’t spend much time in the court anymore, but there are places in the mountains…” He trails off in thought. Peaceful places where the trees are old as stone, where moonlight spills through the branches like a silken web and in the quiet hours of early morning the soul stirs, touched by some timeless nameless thing. He shows Asterion in shimmering glimpses of the mind, but even the memories are not the same as being there. “There would always be a place for you.” It was far from the ocean, but it was a good place to be. It felt more like home to Eik than any walled place ever did.
But that was enough of that. Surely the offer did not detract from the fact that there was no place for a former king in his own kingdom. Eik could relate in part, but ultimately their situations were different.
"Tell me of your daughters. I met Aspara, briefly, on the way to the last festival in Denocte. You have much to be proud of."
“Oh I know. It’s the first thing she told me, when I came home.” He snorts. There was no “Hello mother, hello father, how are you? How was the war?” It was “Papa, papa, I met uncle Asterion! He really does have stars in his skin! And the sun king, Orestes, he has a lion, can you believe it...”
“Thank you." He smiles and sucks his head, at once bashful and proud. "They’re... smart. And brave, and beautiful, and strong. And so different from each other.” Avesta was a thunderstorm and Aspara was a tidal wave. It was always a marvel to him, how each daughter was her own woman, and would seemingly be more or less exactly the same with or without the influence of their parents. Yet sometimes he’d look one or the other in the eye and it was like looking right at himself. “It’s terrifying, seeing myself in them.” He shakes his head and laughs, although he is entirely serious- he had hoped they would be all Isra. (He recognizes that would be terrifying in its own right, but still…)
They’re the best thing I’ve ever done, he almost says, but that seems too much like gloating. There isn’t very much for him to take credit for, anyway. If anything, there’s only blame. He shouldn’t have left Aspara behind, he should have made her come or stayed with her. At the same time, he needed to be there for Avesta-- yet he wasn’t, not when it counted, and she… his mouth turns dry. She died, didn’t she? And she came back, but at what cost he did not yet know, or did not yet want to admit. "They give me hope," he says finally. In a way it feels as though all his flaws and mistakes have been redeemed, some cosmic scale has been evened and with it he can now breathe easy-- Even in the city that fills him with guilt and remorse and wonder.
The two men stop walking to let a group of mares pass, heavy water skins on their backs and laughter on their tongues. One with long, dark lashes glances coyly at Asterion. When they continue it is toward the market, toward the varied scents of spices and dates and fresh flatbread, baking on coals.
Time makes fools of us all
