TUCSON
because regret drives you as crazy
as the taste of swallowed words
as the taste of swallowed words
T
here is a meeting, and he goes, because he doesn’t know what else to do. He’d been at a tavern most of the morning and he still smells like whiskey, or bourbon, or both. The taste of it sticks on his tongue. The remnants of it burn in his belly, and he knows, he knows, he shouldn’t go. He doesn’t belong. He isn’t one of these city folk, these do-gooders. But… what else is he going to do? He steps outside, blinking away the sunlight with bloodshot eyes, and the simple act propels him toward the field where Marisol is waiting for them. He is bustled along in a small crowd, most of whom he doesn’t recognise. Everything is clean, and crisp, and summer. Except for him. Except for him. He feels the late night sticking to his body, making his joints creak. He feels better suited for the wilds than this sort of setting, surrounded by shopkeepers and soldiers and citizens. Citizens. The word itself is heavy enough to make the cowboy cringe.
Dusk Court as he finds a place at the back of the crowd. He finds it, however, a little hard to see there… But he can still hear Marisol’s voice rise above them, and see one wing silhouetted against the sky like an offering. She speaks of a king gone missing, an ex-queen, and a once-god. He doesn’t know any of this, though. He doesn’t know the woman could tear apart the very fibres between times and dimensions, or that Asterion could control the sea, or that Lysander was a god-man bound to a more magic less form—and if he had been told, Tucson would have laughed outright. That’s a damn fairytale. The tragedy of the whole affair was lost on him and, a little drunk, Tucson prowls along the back of the gathering crowd. The woman doing the speaking is striking and winged, and something about her says Commander in his mind.
He wonders if he should feel sorry for them.
He doesn’t.
There is something almost cathartic about it; seeing the shock, the sorrow. There’s something that reminds him it could always be worse and a small, cruel part of him wants to speak above the shock silences and affirmative words of Marisol’s friends and confidants. And a part of him does, under his breath: “That’s life.” Everyone leaves, or dies, or doesn’t come home. Don’t they know that, by now? He wants to accuse them; he wants to resent them. They’re jus’ damn soft but thinking it, much less saying it, feels unfair.
He doesn’t know why he thinks, for a moment, of how long it has been since he cried.
He doesn’t know why the fact he can’t remember bothers him, a little.
@Dusk Court | "speaks" | notes: oops... here's a sourpuss.
