The presented gift

DEIMOS And in your darkest hour, I hold secrets flame Sascha was always a piece of effervescence Deimos couldn’t quite fathom, but appreciated just the same. After these past few agonizing, melancholy, anguishing days, the bright, sunshine distinction was difficult to take, but he visibly softened, less of a reserved, nonchalant gaze, easing a breath from his lungs, eyes following the bird-like movements of the other man. Thereafter, though, with the benediction, the benevolence, the proffered gift, his eyes widened, obvious bewilderment and surprising sketched over his features for a moment; gone when he remembered how to do something other than stare. “You did not need to,” he began, the same balking entity of not enough and not worthy and undeserving beginning to scald over his surface, hard lines to crack and fissure, to erode and misplace. “But thank you,” gifts a novelty, a rarity, other than from loved ones, and he pulled it back into his hands with the notes of reverences, careful, precise. Sick, and then LongNight’s spells hadn’t done them any good – some frame of apology working its way through the Sword’s throat, but he ceased when he realized the healer might have been waiting for him to open it. Instead of ravaging and ripping into the fold, he maneuvered over the wrapping attentively, peeling it away layer by layer, and before long, the sheath unfurled before him. Carved wood, adorned in brass edges, warrior semblances gracing along the cover and details, time and work etched into its sanctions, intricate designations applied in fastidious outlines. For a moment, he didn’t know what to say – a pattern everyone was accustomed to, but in these intervals, it was only because he so often didn’t understand the warmth, the generosity, of so many others. “Thank you.” Again, like an echo: It probably didn't encompass everything building and bridging in his chest, his words rarely did, but a generous smile followed, a softening of the feral expressions. “This is perfect. Did you make it?” Fellow Artisans, after all. master of nothing place; of recoil and grace