[P] you are jealous of tragedies

[Renwick]

❖
Night guide you, lad — past those sorrow fields & sombre marshes — to a kinder end.

T

he oldest trick in the book, timeless in it's usage, versatile and easily applied. Glittering darkly on an apocatheries wall, brightly against soft satin pillows and sombrely somewhere between seasmoke & melancholic window views.  

Renwick is a man of reasons, and seldom are they truly wicked by design. He's been raised better than that, his spear tipped pride abhors such carelesss, lackadaisical usage as a means to pass the time. Infliction for the basest kind of satisfaction. This temple of smoke, shadows and starlight — you protect your own, first. For they are family, even if you never spared more than a cursory glance of greeting. Denocte is a big and beautiful place, you can spend your life dancing and never meet everyone else dancing in that very same floor.

However — to focus on his more noble traits and it would be just the smallest sin, for it'd deny that his silence comes in a trickster's guise. For Renwick is to some degree, toying with this handsome stranger as a means to pass the time, while fulfilling his solemn duty to his court.  

Time, and it's yawning expanse, has become something of an endless toil. It pays to inject some levity, where you can get it.

Just like in the jousts, and cobblestone arena's nestled within crumbling fortress walls, their words collide.

Would you like to warm it, then — was she special to you.

The stranger beheads his question in such an artless fashion it could be considered a master stroke. Neatly bisecting any residual wonder of this supposed spectre's importance to the gilded man, her meaning to bring him so far down into Denocte's shadowy embrace.

Renwick's amusement is a palpable, immediate thing. The curl of his mouth takes on a new edge, fox sly. Reminiscent of statues in forgotten temples, odes to minor gods whose foolery and trickery reflect in their eternal guardians clever smiles. Gemstones eyes snapping wildfire, hot and cold.

It remains even after the man provides him with an achingly familiar response. Rippling out in internal waters, larger and more potent than any stone could produce. "That they do." He says, more to himself than the other. "That they do."

But the nature of a ghost is to persist, long after their bones grow cold. Far beyond when pieces of them crumble to ash and dust, taking with them all the rose tinted memories and expectations you hoped to achieve and never got. Wine turns sour in the mouth, while the reflection in the mirror can only muster up an indifferent glance. Judging and dismissing you without pause.  

Of course, you can attempt to exorcise the ghost once and for all. Once they've overstayed their welcome. Turning sunday self-flagellation into an overworked, mundane chore that you begrudgingly toil at because you have exactly zero other outlets. The dark romantic repentence you were hoping it would remain, imposing upon your senses a world that is beautifully sad, sadly beautiful slipping between cracks and fissures. No, it robs it of that kind of luster and makes it grey. Terrible, obtrusive grey. An affront to the senses, when it has no strict right to be. It's grey, after all.

But then the stranger in the tattered cloak will come to you at wolf hour, and ask you if you want to commit to the purge. After they leave you, it reminds, crooked mouth pulled into an approximation of a rictus grin. That in it's absence a void will take it's spot, and voids are prone to fester in often unexpected ways. Full of teeth, grime and snarling contempt.

Is it better to house the devil you know, or the unknown beyond the dark corridor?

Renwick watches him go, further down the dock where he knows the planks grow rickety and unsecure. Where the lantern chains creak against iron links. Molten eyes curious and intrigued. Stranger things have happened, but this seems to be the latest oddity to land at his door.

There will be no more sailors and vagabonds like to come this way again tonight. Rendering the docks a graveyard of ships and passing marine life, their bodies dark shapes breaking moonlit waters only to disappear again.

And how occupied are the seats around your heart, lad?

"Woefully vacant, exceptionally pricey and entirely worth their price point." He retorts with a laugh. His spot by the brazier becomes cold, as the knight meanders after the stranger. Who to his quiet dismay, clearly has a hand on him or more. Rarely is he considered the shorter party to any event, long legged as  he is. Denocte is a Realm of strange happenings, and her sea shore is equally prone to unusual turns. No surprise that in this meeting point of two unpredictabilities, there's a knight and a vagabond conversing slyly between themselves.

When he stops again, it's by the man's side. Unapologetically inviting himself into his space, as if he's bought and paid for the right already. It is his home, he would say, if he was challenged on it. He has a right to slot himself where ever he likes.

"Why, interested in procuring one, sir?" Corner of his mouth tick further upward. Clearly delighted by both the brazen usage of his own term wielded back upon him, and the proposition in the first place.

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