DEIMOS
Each land seemed to have its own designated terrors and tyrannies; and eventually they became par for the course, expected, not even openly surprising. Volcanoes erupting, sicknesses spreading, monsters unfurling from woodworks, ursurs and dragons rampaging along icy windfalls. Threats were almost a dime a dozen, and contentment, happiness, peace, a far rarer composition, made, instilled, and carved from their own manners, instances, and mettle. He’d thought he’d had it, and for a time that’d been true – family and friends and loved ones surrounding, cherishing, a generous assortment of love and devotion – Stripped down to nearly nothing in less than a year.
Except for those like Aisha, and no measure of his gratitude could accurately express seconds and instances like these were openly regarded in tranquility, in serenity, in healing, balming edges to his battered soul.
He only laughed at her snark, expecting some manner of reply, his head rising to stare over the proportions before them. “Certainly not the barracks first then,” and he snickered, smirked, manifested a very juvenile grin, before leading them down the winding edges of road and stones, nodding to those manifested outside, striving to carry himself as he’d done on the tundra – that he belonged to the winter havens and the frigid gales. “Palace, then the buildings surrounding it,” which included the military installation anyway. The structure would be jutting out towards the skyline anyway, appearing like an icy fixture, a towering colossus of carved sanctities and reaches, and the squares before it lined in market wares, should Aisha wish to pry and wander.
He was something solid
to lean against
violent and fierce and unmoving
