45 Winter 520
There are okay days. There are better ones.
And then there are the ones he doesn’t see coming.
Though he hadn’t exactly repented that day Shiress decided to confront him about his recent behavior, it nevertheless had some manifest effect. At the very least he’s been holding up his end of the bargain, keeping himself to himself and his comings and goings out of sight, and beyond reproach. Though he resents the idea that he’s made any personal changes simply because someone had expressed the opinion that he ought to – for one, logistically speaking, it’s a lot easier to stealth in and out of the front door when he’s sober. Sober-er, with a hard side of ish. The end result is that Shiress to some extent got exactly what she wanted, Taalviel has quit harping, and he moves like a wraith in and out of the domicile. He hasn’t got a kind word for anyone, but he hasn’t got an unkind one either.
But today – perhaps it’s the culmination of sleeping a bit better, eating a few meals with some actual degree of interest, not spending hours with his head hovering over a toilet, and most importantly, successfully avoiding all spats, arguments, and even tiffs with the women of the house – but he gets out of bed looking marginally better. Feeling a touch steadier. Not perfect, but certainly more substantial than he has in months. As if his magical suit knows it, or somehow in its mysterious machinations it’s aware of exactly how much more of a push he needs – but it turns into something rather new that morning.
As is his custom – and, very begrudgingly yes, it’s a whole lot more feasible when his head’s on straight – he slinks down the two flights of stairs in Shiress’ parents’ cottage. Partly visibly through the kitchen doorway, Shiress stands by the sink with her back to him, an heirloom apron that might be older than he is tied around her waist, Ian in her arms. He’s a whisper out the front door. He doubts she notices him – but if she does, she very wisely doesn’t confront, which is just as well.
Out on the cobblestone path he steps, sleek black brogues shining in the sun. The light bounds so differently here – he’s never lived in a valley, never been so cradled, and it’s as if the sun tumbled down the Zastoska Mountains, bounding back and forth between granite and bay, like a firefly caught beneath a bell jar. Despite all the port traffic, the air is –
He inhales the brisk morning air, exhales sharply.
The ice in Avanthal had a clarifying, cleansing effect, but drawing deep breaths there was asking for a dagger to the lung. But Zeltivan air, dare he say it –
It’s just right.
So there is, after all, one thing he does like about living here.
Just one?
The morose thought, his usual way of winding, hangs about him in the same mist he had just reveled in. He tries to shove it aside. After all, his magical suit has gone and turned itself the loveliest sapphire blue. Surface area-wise, it’s not the most extravagant thing it’s ever morphed into – but it’s a marvel with its clean, razor-sharp lines, the apex of a winter wave with silver trim. The jacket’s close-cut, with dramatic tails and a vent up the back. When he turns it flows with him; when he dips it flutters. He catches his reflection in a shop window and –
It’s the first time in a long time he doesn’t immediately shrink back. The most he’s felt like himself, whatever that is, in a very long while.
But confronting the fact, that momentary victory itself, is what wilts him.
The mountains encircling the city suddenly feel less like a bower, more like a ditch into which he’s stumbled, and he’ll never climb out. He imagines trying to run up the sides, like an ant caught in the bath, only to inevitably slide back down. And the ant in the bath – it always drowns.
But it’s good, being alone. Isn’t it? When he’s alone, there’s no one to argue with. No one to remember who he used to be, to then hold that against him because who he is now is a whole lot sorrier, wears his suits like costumes instead of holy armor.
He avoids glimpsing himself in the next shop window he passes. He doesn’t have any particular plan today except to drum up business, and as foolish as he suddenly feels in bright, inky blue, it does help when he’s making new contacts if he resembles an upstanding citizen.
It’s tempting to default to his usual haunts. East Street, that is. But he knows that if he enters East Street he’s most certainly going to exit high, and while that is an ever-tempting offer, he kind of likes this thing he has going, where everyone in his life, especially Shiress, isn’t glaring daggers.
He heads down streets he’s less familiar with. His usual clientele, at least the ones that get on with him the easiest, tend to be middle-class housewives, evidently too busy to do any private investigating on their own. He knows the look – new frock, painted nails, perhaps a bouffant and hat. Might have equally scrubbed children or a miniature dog – who certainly gets fed better than he does – in tow. In the right neighborhoods there are plenty of them; then, from the grand pool, is the exercise of determining which one has that certain crease in her brow that suggests she might have something on her mind, towards which he might be of some use.
It’s not so different from how he’d swan around in Ravok. Though they dress a little different back there – a bit more gilded, for some reason more scarves, and for a while there was that fad with striped breeches and stacked bracelets that he himself didn’t really get behind, but it was awfully entertaining to watch everyone try.
Funny, the fripperies with which he used to predominately occupy his time.
It’s while he’s thinking of Ravok that he spots her. And he almost misses her, because that’s how deeply his mind leaves him now, how vividly he daydreams, flies him far away from Zeltiva and right into Ravokian lantern light.
But it’s her, unmistakably her, she who had once held him in a candled, haze-thick shop and told him what the cards could See.
She who had appeared like a bursting bloom one summer night on a Lark barge, had swayed with him in a sea of enemies, had confronted a dark god of Chaos and run headfirst into the unknown.
Through it all she had held her head high.
He’d never met anyone quite like her – doesn’t think he ever will.
“Rohka?" he calls, daring to believe his eyes. "Rohka!”
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