[AW] This grand show is eternal

[Eik]

The dull, flat tiredness settles over him. It quiets. As it does, it transforms to something different. Suddenly, the distance narrows between the way things are and the way they seem to be. Maybe it is the company, or the particular way the light shines on the water, or the sea itself, the needle that stitches reality together with the rise and fall of the waves.

This clarity is rare these days, and he ponders further the cause of it. The more he searches for an explanation the father away it seems, so he tries instead to settle into the moment and savor it while it lasts. Times like these he'd like to be alone, to use this clarity to ponder the hows and whys, but he knows if he forced the situation it would crumble away and he would be left again with the maddening feeling of... of

(galleries full of slightly crooked portraits, and everyone absorbed by the brushwork and motion and colors, and nobody seems to notice the frames aren't plush, or do they notice but don't care, or is their gravity simply different than yours, is it you that's crooked or)

the  things we don't have words for. Anyway, we never find clarity when we are alone. But we enjoy it now. The sea, the sky, all of it so sharp and clear now, as though a veil has been turned to glass. It lifts his spirits a bit. And he is unexpectedly very fond of this stranger, with whom he's shared only a few words. They are very different, certainly, but there is a sense of a kindred spirit. You don't need words for some things.

He is interested as the man speaks of where he is from. Eik is one of those many men of the road, tickled by wanderlust no matter where he does. Novus is the warmest place he's ever been, and it has taken him a long time to get here. He can only image how long it would take to end up somewhere warmer, and what that would feel like.

"You call this cold?" He is clearly amused, and suddenly stops in his tracks. "Where I'm from, summer is a single, very long day, and winter... horrific. I don't have words for it." He grins, an unexpected response to memories of such a harsh, unforgiving homeland. It was a place that suited his melancholy. He misses it. He turns to the ocean and after a moment of hesitation charges in, right up to his chest. The water is admittedly colder than he expected (he's a land baby, and still cannot wrap his mind around the water feeling colder than the air around it) and it almost knocks the breath out of him. But it is nice to feel things, once in a while, and he finds himself laughing.

"I am from Solterra," He calls over his shoulder to his companion. "It is so fucking hot there." It is not like him to complain, but he does not feel like himself right now.

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There is no better way to know us
E I K
than as two wolves, come separately to a wood

@Asterion daww Eik's oddly so happy :')