in the end, everyone is aware of this: nobody keeps any of what he has, and life is only a borrowing of bones.
T
he forest holds its breath. Perhaps it is the silence after the flood; but Pravda is no fool. He recognizes the wildness in the boy’s demeanor, the threading of scars like constellations across the boy’s body. He has had a hard life. And that hard life is epitomized, now, in his hard and wild stare. The garden around him wilts; and Pravda recognizes the magic but does not comment on it.
His quiet observance is nearly an insult, to one who rages so evidently; to one who holds himself as a young prince. Pravda does not empathize with this type of anger. He has never felt it, passionate and righteous. His feelings are never warm. They are always cold or, if not cold, then—
(Then he tries not to feel them at all).
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Pravda asks, but there is nothing caustic in his tone. It is genuine. “Would you—well. I would offer you something to drink, but unfortunately all my stores are damaged from the storm.”
Prigovora has yet to move. He blinks the sunlight lazily from his eyes and stretches out lethargically. Then, he yawns. And when he yawns his mouth gapes; every sharp, bright tooth catches the sunlight he basks in and when he snaps his jaws closed it is to glance at Leonidas with grinning eyes.
Meanwhile, Pravda’s memory of the boy is colored by shame; it is a shame to see him grown, and scarred; it is a shame that, when they had met, he had not had control over his bonded.
A shame, a shame, a shame.
But when you have lived thousands of years, a shame is of little significance.
