Laughter is contagious .. or so they say.
I'm not sure what I believe anymore. These days it feels like we all wake up just to see if the lottery we bought into the night before is the winning ticket that sets us free. Let us not sit and dwell on all the reasons why that might be a bad way to think about things - because the way I see it, the glass is always half full.
No matter what.
The Rampaging Rabbit is gone, no more, the comfortable life of living with Tarquin and our troupe of misguided and mismatched men and women who just didn't fit in - gone too - the life as I last knew it had been the best one and it is gone now. Gone. 'Vamanos!' - as my youngest son would say. How do you tell your soulless kid that your life has disappeared-you because of them out of kind manner? You don't -
Then again, you shouldn't leave without telling anyone where you are going when you live somewhere that Alexander Graham Bell does not. If you do live there, leave a message in a conspicuous place in black ink. Especially if you choose to - on a whim - willingly get yourself kidnapped by a caravan of criminals that will either take you to the place you need to be . Or maybe they will just eat you for dinner instead because you've tricked the fools with a crazy parlor trick of turning yourself into a rabbit.
I was always a gambling man.
This is the truth, I swear it.
I say it again, my life is over, The Rampaging Rabbit is gone, my roadside brothel is gone. Quin is missing - again - and I only have myself to blame for being so curiously drawn to getting into another journey. One right after the other -- Please! -- keep them coming! I am so self indulgent! But more laughing and less self-loathing, of course, I am who I am so why-ever should I deny my heart all the things that it loves? I cannot imagine a more perfect world than the one that Quinn is in, for he knows me - he knows my heart and still?
Still, he loves me.
I'll find him or I'll haunt him if I should die along the way.
* * *
For energy's sake he picked a rare form he had long since been estranged from since the days of Desesperos. Somewhere between here and there he forgot most of the names of those he took this form for. Whatever it had been (he longs to forget the reasons why) it did not mean well for the anticipated target. So many skulls had been crushed between the hulking jaws of a panther. Too many bellies split open like his victims were pumpkins to smash apart on Halloween. Guts everywhere - yucky - but he didn't care as he'd spend every night licking himself clean of the sins he'd committed as if it were that easy. How fitting for Vhetiveer to rely on that very same tool he used for murder to now hunt down the ones he loved.
As if Despesperos was still alive and well, the panther purred for him.
He must find Tarquin quickly and retire this body soon - it felt unstable in the wilds of Novus - as if the very magic that made the world which surrounded him now knew he was invading with a magic unknown. This is how it always started, first the nausea then the headaches - then the body flu-like symtoms to follow. After that the blurred visions and the ever-distracted mind. The power that let him manipulate his form was leaving him - the third eye that kept a firm hand in the Neither-reaches (neither alive or dead - purgatory? perhaps?) felt weaker and weaker the farther he went to track Tarquin's trails.
Losing his Site was the first thing to go, and halfway through the Arma mountains Vhetiveer's psychic chord on Tarquin shorted out entirely. After that, the panther wandered confused until he realized that Ajna had closed herself on him and shut Vhetiveer out. That is when the man knew he had hit foreign soil, when the black fur started coming off in patches he was far more calm than any other might be. Especially when that body began to rot apart even though he was alive - very much alive.
Needless to say, at some point the magic reserves he had-had run out. What Vhetiveer had lead him close enough to Tarquin and he would rely on this world to deliver him to the one he sought to find. As the panther's spirit withered into the decayed remains of what once was - from it a copper bright horse emerged. Somewhat grudgingly as it crawled from ruins onto four unsteady legs. Lopsided at first as his mind took a moment to catch up to all that was happening, Vhetiveer was quickly moving along again, quietly worried that it had been the Rift all along.
The game was over, Vhetiveer now spooked into thinking it might be that same nightmare all over again, he decided to run instead of walk. The distance between him and Tarquin was subjective - it depended on how many times he got lost along the way. That - and if he could keep his wariness of all things that seemed too good to be true at bay. Some routes he simply didn't take even though it was clear that it was the right way - nope.
It was a hard two hours before he saw the ghost of what might be Tarquin travelling in the same direction Vhetiveer was going, he mozied as long as he could before he couldn't handle it anymore. The second the pale figure stopped moving he loped forward to catch up, the hunt long over the second he felt his whiskers fall off when he tried to lick them.
Tarquin was smiling and calling him by a name that refused to abandon it's owner, Choke.
"None other." He replied before sidling up beside him. "And of course you can -- anything for you," Vhetiveer rumbled before dipping his nose into the lavender hair of the man beside him as if testing to see if he was real.
"I found him." He breathes at long last, something that he has waited to say for a very long time about their son Ucal, the one who never got the chance to 'Be', is.
"His first word was vamanos."
