In the past few weeks, Eik has stood beneath quarreling gods, gotten trapped underground with some of his closest friends, and started to hear voices in his head that are not his own. And now there is a blizzard raging in Solterra with no sign of letting up anytime soon.
Even here, behind the shelter of stone walls with fire and horseflesh to warm him and booze to blue the memories, he sees them every time he closes his eyes-- the ones lost in the blizzard. Not their faces but their souls, multicolored candles that flicker, and flicker, and finally, one by one, sputter out. Each time one of them takes a last breath he feels it. Most just fade away too exhausted to fight death, and there is something peaceful about their passage. Some go out with regret on their mind, or sorrow. The hardest to bear are the ones who leave with the spitfire of an animal just not ready to die. He does not know which category he would fall in, or which he would want to.
Surely these are just the thoughts of a madman with a fever (most don't realize this, but it can be truly ugly when fever-dreams and mania collide)... but he has begun to question his madness... it has never been this precise before, in a way that is both frightening and exciting. What if he is still connected to the poor beasts in the storm? He thought that strange magic had long fizzled out, taking all his body's warmth with it, but maybe... maybe it is still there, in the space between blood cells, tired but not extinguished.
Eiks eyes are glazed in thought as the party goers whirl around him, seemingly oblivious to the gravity of the storm outside-- although more likely just willfully ignorant. He slowly makes his way to a wall which he leans against heavily.
Shivering and sweating at once, and trying his hardest to not close his eyes,
(leave me alone, please, there's nothing more I can do for you)
he looks, in no uncertain terms, like shit.
* I have let myself go where the dust
E I K Has the color of nothing
The world was white and not gilded like Teiran was used to. Things had not gotten quite to the point of desperation yet, though she knew they would eventually, as there was no reprieve in sight. The rose hued warrior had to admit that for as much as she did not understand the party, it seemed to be helping the citizens of Solterra to keep their spirits up. A point to Bexley, she thought.
Let it be known that Teiran does not know how to party. She does not have jovial laughter, enjoyment of games or celebratory spirit wired into her. She stands still as a statue on the edge of the crowd, simply watching. Ever the alert soldier Teiran felt prepared for anything. That is, until someone decided to make their way over to her. Voice too loud, movements too sloppy. A sensory overload. Correction, Teiran was prepared for anything but chit chat.
Whther it was the chips of ice in her eyes or the responses made up entirely of only various sounds, they decided she was not worth the precious little joy they gleaned from the cup they clung so tightly to. And as they wandered off to find someone new to hold their attention her gaze landed on a familiar face, though she dared say he looked so terrible it was almost easy to pass him over. "You look half dead, Eik," and truly he did look more phantom than he ever did even with a coat as pale as the snow they were being blanketed with.
Her words were not exactly warm, but still there was a measure of care in them. It was more militant than anything, but it was there. Teiran thrived in war, and was this not any different than any other battle she had fought? A battle for survival. The only difference now was she could not kill or chase off the clouds above. "If we don't get your temperature stabilized we're going to lose you." And she bumped her shoulder against his, not to be startling or rude, but to jostle him. He needed to stay awake.
The walls of the court feel like a cage too small for one man, let alone a kingdom.
It would not be so bad if he could feel the moonlight on his back and breathe deeply the crisp night air of the desert. It would not be so bad if he were not bone-tired and half-mad. But the weather has trapped him inside and the magic has stripped away his energy and the thinking is like ants streaming out from the earth-- you watch for some time and you wonder- when will they stop? But they keep emerging and spreading and there is no stop. You know that if you close your eyes for just a moment they take you over too so you stand there transfixed and watch them pour out from the dirt, a river of legs, consuming everything, and--
"You look half dead, Eik."
Before he can fix his attention on her, a memory carries him away. The sky was that deep blue color, soul blue, not a cloud in sight to spare them from the beating sun. Struck by some strange thought, he told Rhoswen he was a ghost.
Why did he tell her he was a ghost?
His eyes focus on the mare who spoke. Teiran. He blinks. "Lose me..." Eik does not seem to understand, at first. A small frown curls at his lips and it makes him seem oddly boyish. He had not ever thought that his absence would be considered a loss to anyone. When she bumps her shoulder against him, his skin does not feel like his own. A shiver silently rolls down his spine.
"Is it possible any of the ones caught in the blizzard will survive?" His attention is not very good at staying focused on himself. A weight moment passes before he adds, voice quiet and strained as though sharing a confession, "When I close my eyes, I see them."
Eik lied that day, beneath the soul blue sky. He did not realize it until much later-- Until now. He is not the ghost, but the haunted.
- - - There is no better way to know us
E I K than as two wolves, come separately to a wood
She did know how to answer it but a small part of Teiran was thinking that her answer was probably not the one that Eik really wanted to hear. Teiran had already ventured once out into the blizzard, found one to save even if he hadn't been searching for saving. If there were others she had not found them nor evidence of them.
"Maybe, if they're smart. Or lucky," the warrior said, settling for the only truth she knew. "But, no, probably not. Not unless this ends soon and the air clears enough for them to see five feet in front of them." If this didn't end soon, even those of them safely inside the court walls would succumb to cold and hunger eventually. It was a harsh reality, but it was the one they were stuck with at the moment. And Teiran couldn't say whether her answer would ease him or not, but easing others was never her specialty.
"Then don't close your eyes," is the warrior's simple solution to Eik's dilemma, because it was the thing that made the most rational sense. Though she would never speak it, Teiran knew a thing or two about what hides behind closed eyelids. "Look at this crazy, ridiculous party that Bexley threw, look at the drunk fools searching for warmth in their cups. Look at me, but whatever you do focus and keep your eyes open." She was nothing but tough love, if that was even what you could call it, and the suggestion was more a demand than anything else.
If she was a captain then these were her soldiers, and she needed all of them. Eik may have been Emissary and therefore above her, but this was her court, he was her court, and her priority was to protect them, even from themselves.
"What is worse, to freeze or to boil?" because there is no denying that the desert in its glory had claimed lives too.
When she says "maybe," it sounds like "no." He simply nods his head with a quiet "hmm." as he tries to ward off that persistent feeling of guilt. It is the answer he expected if not the one he wanted.
Eik quivers with a fever he will later know as magic sickness. Too much magic spent too fast. He will experience this again one day, and again a third time, and on the cusp of the fourth he will learn to recognize when he is digging too deep into his reserves, when he needs to stop. But all he knows now is that his body feels burning hot one moment and frozen the next, and he does not know whether he wants to lie down in the snow or stand by the fire or escape consciousness into a deep slumber.
Eik tries to take Teiran's advice and keep his eyes open. His vision is hazy, like looking at the world through a pane of frosted glass, and it takes a dizzying effort to focus his gaze. In the end, it is his ears which keep his eyes open. The sound of her voice is calm, solid, almost a little flat. His eyes rest on a table, or maybe it is the floor, and his ears rest on the soldier. The sound of her voice becomes something like a meditation.
"What is worse, to freeze or to boil?"
"To boil." It is not a comfort to him. "To burn," he clarifies after a moment, because he knows how slow a death that can be.
He does not want to think about it.
"Can you keep talking? His eyes flicker to her but only partially see. Her voice roots him, but he isn't sure how to say this. He hopes she understands, or even if she doesn't-- he hopes she obliges. "Tell me something about yourself."
* I have let myself go where the dust
E I K Has the color of nothing
”To boil,” he says, and Teiran is sure she can agree, though she can’t exactly imagine it. The feel your blood grow hot from something other than anger, ”To burn” like a criminal at the stake, to feel yourself dying. It is a dark and painful one, indeed. Eik may not want to think about it but Teiran has faced worse things than burning. At least to burn means to eventually get the sweet reprieve of death. To be tortured is for it to only continue, and to bear the scars of it forever.
He asks her to keep speaking and her sharp, sage green eyes glance down at the same moment that his glance up. The soldier doesn’t recognize the question as any more than it is: a request. She can’t think that it is somehow soothing to the Emissary standing at her side for her voice to drone on about insignificant things, but he asked and she would, indeed, oblige.
”Tell me something about yourself.”
Ah, and there is so much that she could say. Things that he likely is aware of but doesn’t exactly know the truth of, the things that made her who she is. An orphan with a vigor inside her much bigger than the body that housed it, a tool and a puppet, a formidable, talented fighter. She doesn’t say any of those things. “I hate parties,” is the eventual fact that escapes her, and no doubt what a revelation it is, if her lack of enthusiasm is any indication.
“Parties mean that equines get drunk and when they get drunk they get reckless, and that means babysitting a bunch of adults.” Her words are lackluster, a little dull and maybe even a little nonsensical, but she says them anyway. “And, when they’re drunk they try to talk to me too much,” and if there is one truth about anything on this night, it is that Teiran is horribly unfit to carry on small talk. For all the ways this party had been made to keep them warm, she didn’t think she’d get lucky enough for it to burn.
Feeling good, about anything, always felt a little wrong to him. Even when times were good and peace, or something like it, colored everything in shades of rose-gold... even then, it never felt right to feel good. Maybe it is biological, a faulty rung in a double helix hidden in his blood. Maybe it is spiritual, his stained soul heavy with too many memories of too many lifetimes. Maybe it is just rotten chance. He never could be considered a lucky man, by any measure.
Whatever the reason is, it is beyond his comprehension why he does not want to feel good right now. He does not want comfort, or distraction. It is easy to feel like shit, and in contrast it takes so, so much effort to feel even marginally better. Suffering is the least he could do in memory of the dead...
But although the breath rattles in his chest he feels it still has the strength, the stubborn desire, to make it to the next day. Teiran is damn stubborn too, and he finds himself slightly charmed and mostly annoyed by it.
"I hate parties," she says, and his eyes warm with understanding. At first he had hated them because of envy-- he could not understand how everyone could be so happy, all crammed together in hot, noisy rooms. Later he would hate them because of their decadence. He does not hate them anymore, but neither does he particularly enjoy them. They serve their purpose, and he views them as he would any tool. But Teiran's hate of parties stems from a different reason. To him it seems this reason is responsibility. She feels responsible for maintaining the peace, even if it means unwanted encounters (talkative drunkards) and he can respect that. Eik had to learn responsibility, it was not ingrained in him.
"But you're so good at babysitting." He coughs, the sound ragged and course. Maybe it is supposed to be a laugh, for there was a sarcastic tone to his words. He thinks they both know that just because you're good at something doesn't mean it gives you pleasure to do.
"I'll be okay," Eik says when the coughing passes. "Really." He can't tell if she believes him. He doesn't know if he has the energy to care. "Thank you. For what you do." It's not her naggingbabysitting of him that he means but everything else.
(what he means is "thank you for who you are")
He's never had the opportunity to say it before but it seems important to do so now.
* I have let myself go where the dust
E I K Has the color of nothing
Teiran cannot help but to listen to his breathing as it rattles through him. The weakness of his body is quite evident. The exhaustion of his mind and spirit is more obscure to her, more difficult to discern, but he reminds her of a fading, flickering candle flame. Clinging to life, against all odds. In her life she has found that some are like that. Some scream and kick and fight and others hold on tightly, courageously. In the end, though, everyone has fight in them.
Eik speaks and his accompanying cough jolts through her body like a lightning bolt, and Teiran thinks that maybe she can almost feel the shudder of it in her bones, as if they might, too, tremble and fall. But they remain strong and locked in place, as unfailing as they’ve ever been. “You are easy to babysit,” the soldier says in response, and she is not joking. The Emissary doesn’t get in her face, doesn’t babble on about senseless things, and he, perhaps, out of everyone at this party, needs her the most.
Even if he doesn’t know it. Even if she doesn’t quite know it either.
‘Thank you. For what you do.’
If Teiran were anyone else she might shrug humbly, might become bashful. If she were anyone else she might take it in stride, with her chest puffed out. But she is not anyone else, she is just her. A girl raised in the desert on blood and grit and the feeling of magic invading the deepest parts of her, and she does not wield compliments like badges or hide from them in modesty. She is a soldier, bred for conflict, and what she does is all that she knows to do.
“I wouldn’t do anything else,” she says, and, “Solterra is my court and it’s people my people.” Including him, including everyone at this godforsaken party. Including the souls lost in the blizzard that Eik says he can see or feel. She looks at him again, sage green eyes assessing what she sees. “Why don’t we get you inside. The court needs you well, Eik,” and Teiran offers her shoulder for him, should he want it, so that they can both get out of this damn snow.
She shrugs off his gratitude like it doesn't matter, and it probably doesn't. He knows she doesn't do it for him or any individual but for Solterra itself, and he wonders-- will he ever love his court like that? Will he ever love it at all in a way that could be understood by anyone other than himself? Maybe love is not the right word for it, he wouldn't know. He couldn't, not yet anyway. All he knows now is that he belongs here, as surely as the saguaro and twice as stubborn.
Eik doesn't like being helped, he was always stupidly stubborn when it came to his independence, but he sees her point. It would be best to rest-- he almost has no choice, his eyelids are so heavy-- so he accepts her offer with a simple "yes." The feel of her skin is a cool surprise as he leans a fever-hot shoulder into her. It is a thought that will linger in his mind later when sleep takes him over: maybe this heat is his natural state, and the rest of the world is always as cold as it feels now.
He does not say thank you out loud, not again, but maybe his magic reaches out to her mind and plants a seed of appreciation. It might feel like a brief ray of warmth, like pure sunlight, although it would fade too quickly to be understood.
* I have let myself go where the dust
E I K Has the color of nothing
