01-02-2022, 02:47 AM
lend me your hand and we’ll conquer them all --
He cannot read what is flashing through her mind, but he can see the way emotions ripple across her face like waves. He did not expect her to remember him, did not think himself to be anything worth remembering, but he cannot deny that something twists inside of him when it first appears as though she does not. Of course, she had little reason to remember him, didn’t she? Even back then, when most of them did not boast of magic or anything of the like, there was not much to set him apart from anyone. He was quiet and withdrawn, preferring to watch rather than engage. He did not insert himself into politics or drama and he lived an uneventful life, and he did not mind it, for the most part.
Being forgotten was a risk that he took, but it did not make it taste any less bitter on his tongue.
Eventually he realizes that what he took as her not recognizing him is closer to suspicion, and he wonders how different he looks in her eyes. He knows that his coat has lightened, far more silver than the steel gray it had been when he was younger. He is sure the lines of his face have hardened over time, that perhaps he looked wilder after spending so much time away from the rest of the world—a pale mane tangled in knots that lays against his neck, a body that is spider-webbed with scars from simply surviving. “This world,” he answers her in a voice that has now softened, and he casts his gaze around them with a short, rough-sounding laugh. “Or what is left of it.”
He watches her carefully, wondering again at how she can appear so untouched by time. How his memory had managed to preserve her almost perfectly after all these years when so many others were tarnished by the passing of time. “I don’t want anything from you,” he says honestly, because he never had. The fact that he had ever touched her, even once, still did not seem real, and now after so many years he begins to wonder if his longing had fabricated it all. He could never ask her for anything beyond that—would never dream of thinking she owed him anything more. “I am the same as I have always been, though perhaps more adrift than I was even back then. But from you, Ethenia, I would never ask of anything.”
And then, unable to stop himself because she is more unmoored than even him, he asks her, “Where do you go when you are gone?”
He cannot read what is flashing through her mind, but he can see the way emotions ripple across her face like waves. He did not expect her to remember him, did not think himself to be anything worth remembering, but he cannot deny that something twists inside of him when it first appears as though she does not. Of course, she had little reason to remember him, didn’t she? Even back then, when most of them did not boast of magic or anything of the like, there was not much to set him apart from anyone. He was quiet and withdrawn, preferring to watch rather than engage. He did not insert himself into politics or drama and he lived an uneventful life, and he did not mind it, for the most part.
Being forgotten was a risk that he took, but it did not make it taste any less bitter on his tongue.
Eventually he realizes that what he took as her not recognizing him is closer to suspicion, and he wonders how different he looks in her eyes. He knows that his coat has lightened, far more silver than the steel gray it had been when he was younger. He is sure the lines of his face have hardened over time, that perhaps he looked wilder after spending so much time away from the rest of the world—a pale mane tangled in knots that lays against his neck, a body that is spider-webbed with scars from simply surviving. “This world,” he answers her in a voice that has now softened, and he casts his gaze around them with a short, rough-sounding laugh. “Or what is left of it.”
He watches her carefully, wondering again at how she can appear so untouched by time. How his memory had managed to preserve her almost perfectly after all these years when so many others were tarnished by the passing of time. “I don’t want anything from you,” he says honestly, because he never had. The fact that he had ever touched her, even once, still did not seem real, and now after so many years he begins to wonder if his longing had fabricated it all. He could never ask her for anything beyond that—would never dream of thinking she owed him anything more. “I am the same as I have always been, though perhaps more adrift than I was even back then. But from you, Ethenia, I would never ask of anything.”
And then, unable to stop himself because she is more unmoored than even him, he asks her, “Where do you go when you are gone?”
-- but lend me your heart and i’ll just let you fall
eadoin.
@Ethenia