It's not due Vandelin so much as the work between his hands: An unfamiliar pattern, a delicate moment. The pick pulls free, the vial's stoppered, and he turns before it's quite set aside; regards him from a stare grown still and shiny as glass. He hasn't given a true answer, but then, it wasn't a true question.
(Casuistry, that, and there's a joke in there he's forgotten how to tell.)
"How have you found the Inquisition?"
I thought you were dead. He's certain he's remarked as much, during one of those rare moments the elf slips in and out of picture, uncharacteristically quiet. Perhaps that's what kept him from settling into view, out from a fog of absence that began some years ago. The name, the face, the words recede until needed; a ghost recalled its attic, a skeleton in the wardrobe.
We all thought you were dead, But that isn't true either, is it? Jokes elude, but the cloth between his hands, wrapped over twin, hollow dark — that's always been easy to find.
no subject
He doesn't look up.
It's not due Vandelin so much as the work between his hands: An unfamiliar pattern, a delicate moment. The pick pulls free, the vial's stoppered, and he turns before it's quite set aside; regards him from a stare grown still and shiny as glass. He hasn't given a true answer, but then, it wasn't a true question.
(Casuistry, that, and there's a joke in there he's forgotten how to tell.)
"How have you found the Inquisition?"
I thought you were dead. He's certain he's remarked as much, during one of those rare moments the elf slips in and out of picture, uncharacteristically quiet. Perhaps that's what kept him from settling into view, out from a fog of absence that began some years ago. The name, the face, the words recede until needed; a ghost recalled its attic, a skeleton in the wardrobe.
We all thought you were dead, But that isn't true either, is it? Jokes elude, but the cloth between his hands, wrapped over twin, hollow dark — that's always been easy to find.