to feel that we exist, even though in pain
♠︎ ♕ ♠︎
It’s a strange group of feelings, as he explores the island - a mingling of excitement and fear, like betting at a high-stakes table and not knowing the next card that’s about to turn over. One that could just as easily kill you as win you everything.
August is not used to not knowing. Knowledge is his favorite currency, secrets his favorite coin; when they’d all stood on the bridge together, a little city of horses in a line, for every one he recognized he rolled their hidden wants and sins through his mind like a litany. It was a balm, in a way, a game to occupy his mind instead of working at this mystery like clumsy fingers at a knot.
He doesn’t trust this paradise. That’s the easiest thing about the situation, the distrust - why believe a hand that’s already seized you by the throat more than once, no matter how nicely it offers a gift? But he is still a boy who dreams of adventure (that is his own secret, never shared) and it doesn’t feel like fear, the way his heart races at each new discovery. Even the birds are strange, and not just their stones-for-eyes, their trailing fire, the way they must be a portent of something, some other world bleeding into Novus. No, it’s their singing that sticks with him, new and lovely, and it at last soothes away the sound of that dread heartbeat, a hundred thousand berries pounding and dying and dead.
He isn’t sure at what point he became alone. When the silence descended (at least, it felt like silence, though the wind blew and the waves licked up on the shore, and so on and so forth, a veritable chorus of noise) it had seemed to touch the horses, too, and many had wandered away in small groups, in pairs, and singly. At some point Minya had been beside him, and not long ago he had seen Boudika, and he knows this island is thick with those he knows - yet it might be deserted but for him, here in the thick jungle. The shadows are cool over his golden skin, and the pale skein of his hair is crusted with salt. August is usually beautiful, and intentionally so, but after days of waiting and milling and wondering he is near filthy now. It doesn’t bother him; it’s only for the Scarab he takes that kind of care.
Through the trees there is a flash of gold (darker and more burnished than his own) and pale hair. As he picks his way nearer - graceful and near-silent by nature, and not specific intent - his mind begins to place her, to catalogue her as he does everyone he comes across, because one day they may be useful. But before he quite can (before he can make out the scar, old but still livid down her cheek, or the wild-empty look in her eyes) something else catches his eye. A flock of birds, small and still and intent on the stranger. August doesn’t yet look too closely; he knows whatever he sees will make him uneasy with wonder.
Instead he clears his throat, steps forward through the tangling vines and caressing leaves. “You’re being watched,” he says easily, and his silver eyes move from the watchers to Bexley Briar.
@Bexley | I have missed her so
