Loxley’s retelling takes time to hold up against his own experience, one lens beside another glassing a distant flame. His recollection hasn’t dimmed over time. Oghma had welcomed him, only to turn him right back around before his bone-deep relief could calcify into resistance.
No rest for the wicked.
Or for Loxley, who has a princess to marry.
He dials back into the sight of Thot with her eyes crushed shut, stretched like a watering can to the scuff of Loxley’s fingertips, snakey muscle firm beneath the fluff of her feathers. A forked tongue sits blue in her parted beak.
“We could carve you up and I could heal them over again with scars,” Silas says. “If it’s integral to the operation.”
sounds real in affect, but the tip of a look to Richard mid-Thot skritch undermines it. No thanks, goth-dad.
There's a silence that follows, thinking back over their conversation, and before it, his own sense of anxious urgency that had compelled him not simply across the water, but also to pick the lock barring him entry. He ever feels inept about what to do or say about the things that happen to other people, on account of feeling inept about what to do or say about the things that happen to himself.
Still, that isn't any excuse. He says, "I'm sorry you've felt lonesome," and it doesn't ring like hollow sympathy, a sorry for your losses, but of a thing he has contributed to.
Richard settles his attention back on Loxley after a long drink, purple harsh around his eyes in his teeth. He’s scruffed raw and lean, pride shot around the slant of his bones, connections all frayed. Animals dredged out of flood waters have the same look.
He doesn’t know what to say either, hemmed into a half-hearted rifle through reassurances, platitudes.
“It was nice for a time. To have someone.”
This is the truth, for all that it’s also a stumping out of this line of conversation.
“I should rest,” he adds, to make sure. “I’m glad that you’re here.”
Loxley smooths rather than continues scuffing up Thot's feathers, finally lowering his hand. She is, anyway, welcome to stay on his shoulder for as long as its upright or he's not trying to dress down. He nods understanding, an understated gesture.
One that sympathises. They'd talked a while ago of love, or at least of the kinds of partnerships that resemble it. That being a Rifter is a complication. That there was no risk of love happening, for Richard.
Odd reversals all around, really.
"Rest," he bids. "I'll finish off some wine and follow your example."
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faderift2022-08-27 07:25 pm
no subject
Loxley’s retelling takes time to hold up against his own experience, one lens beside another glassing a distant flame. His recollection hasn’t dimmed over time. Oghma had welcomed him, only to turn him right back around before his bone-deep relief could calcify into resistance.
No rest for the wicked.
Or for Loxley, who has a princess to marry.
He dials back into the sight of Thot with her eyes crushed shut, stretched like a watering can to the scuff of Loxley’s fingertips, snakey muscle firm beneath the fluff of her feathers. A forked tongue sits blue in her parted beak.
“We could carve you up and I could heal them over again with scars,” Silas says. “If it’s integral to the operation.”
no subject
sounds real in affect, but the tip of a look to Richard mid-Thot skritch undermines it. No thanks, goth-dad.
There's a silence that follows, thinking back over their conversation, and before it, his own sense of anxious urgency that had compelled him not simply across the water, but also to pick the lock barring him entry. He ever feels inept about what to do or say about the things that happen to other people, on account of feeling inept about what to do or say about the things that happen to himself.
Still, that isn't any excuse. He says, "I'm sorry you've felt lonesome," and it doesn't ring like hollow sympathy, a sorry for your losses, but of a thing he has contributed to.
no subject
He doesn’t know what to say either, hemmed into a half-hearted rifle through reassurances, platitudes.
“It was nice for a time. To have someone.”
This is the truth, for all that it’s also a stumping out of this line of conversation.
“I should rest,” he adds, to make sure. “I’m glad that you’re here.”
no subject
One that sympathises. They'd talked a while ago of love, or at least of the kinds of partnerships that resemble it. That being a Rifter is a complication. That there was no risk of love happening, for Richard.
Odd reversals all around, really.
"Rest," he bids. "I'll finish off some wine and follow your example."