and yes, you’re a too bright disease
The city was already abandoned the day he crawled from that endless dark. Just as well, honestly. Zakariah had only fleeting encounters with the crown, but it was long enough to show him just how ugly it was. It was only gilded gold to masquerade as righteous and just - fair and honorable. Now he was of the mindset that anything adorned in all that gold could have only earned it through deceit. Through treachery, through murder, through pretty lies from soft lips.
He supposed, though, when it came down to it - he couldn’t really blame them. They too, as he did once ( before he died, and came back so helplessly mortal ), lived above whatever law the land thought it could impose. What judge would dare damn something so beautiful, after all? Powerful beyond them, something to look at, to listen to, but not to touch. Not to chastise. Not to enact justice upon.
Of course, he never met Orestes. But when he asked of him once, pulling aside a common woman a naught but a week after his rebirth to learn more of the man, she’d told him he was the color of the sun and Zakariah had nearly laughed himself sick. Everything here worth a damn was gold.
And nothing so bright was to be trusted.
( Zakariah is acutely aware of his own appearance, and he stands by the judgement. )
He’s asked about the rest of the Regime as well, and it tickles him pink once more to know how barren the court is. He neglected to pry for details ( the woman already looked at him funny from the corner of her eye, and seemed keen on ending their conversation just as suddenly as it’d begun ), but he filled the gaps in his knowledge with his own theories.
Now, the traitor wouldn’t consider himself any sort of betting man, but he was and he’d wager everything he had on the idea that some manner of deception and cutthroat court fuckery was to blame. It was easy to surmise that Zolin’s betrayal had left him soured, more bitter a man - petty, even. But he delighted in this vice, and it was one of his only delights of late.
Another is the night air.
Zakariah was painted like the dunes - all gold and truly, horridly bright - but he was born under the winter sun. Winter doesn’t mean as much in Solterra as it did elsewhere, sure, but it meant the boy was born into a less oppressive heat. As such, when the sun dipped below the sand and the moon overtook its watch was when he was most comfortable. He doesn’t sleep much, anymore. ( He’s slept so long, after all, and in such a place where there were times he didn’t know if he ever awoken. Everything, for so long, was a dream. It was all a nightmare. It was a waking, breathing, suffocating nightmare and Zakariah couldn’t say he’d be terribly disappointed if he never slept again.
In truth, he’s scared. He always is.
He’s scared to close his eyes, and to wake back in the catacombs. )
Instead of sleeping, he trails this old world now so new and alien to him. He keeps waiting for the moment it once more feels like home, but it has yet to come. He’d deny it, if you asked him.
But he misses it. All of it. The Arete, the familiar strangers, the life… It was different, now. And he was lonely.
Lonely, but not quite alone.
He doesn’t know he’s the Regent when he sees him. And, quite frankly, he’d not believe you if you told him. Jahin appears to him troubled, tired perhaps. He’s not certain what it is that convinces him to speak. He’d never admit his isolation. Not even to himself
"You look heavy," he murmurs. Heavy in that way knights do, when their knees shake come hour 8 of their watch, and their armor feels like mountains. Heavy in the way a single hare feels slung over a trapper's back while he shuffles his way back to his hungry family.
Heavy in the way a head is, beneath a crown.
@Jahin / speaks / i was literally actively falling asleep while typing this im sorry for all the mistakes im sure are there sobs
