who we are and all that we're trying to be
Safrin appeared, and for once he must not have erred – the uncertainty of everything else scratching and clawing down his spine. He only lifted his eyes at her chuckle, confused and muddled, no extension of laughter on his part. Bewilderment might have registered on his face, had it not been carved back into its reticent stone, anticipating some other sort of bombardment, a twist and turn of fate to schism and cauterize as inward scars. Maybe he wasn’t ready. Maybe they were just faltering and flickering along, and his efforts bought them time until the next onslaught, until the next torture, until the next refrain. Thank you for coming curled through him, because she could have just as easily cast him aside for his part in the chaos. For not being adequate.
The subject dangled there, hanging like a noose. Adam. Peter. Coffee. Apricum. Death strung and stung along, and some left behind in caverns, because of their gall, because of their stupidity, because of a hundred other reasons ringing through his ears. Initially, he hadn’t wanted to waste any time at all; had only paused momentarily to assist Sunjata in his own sojourns for Safrin, into caves, into debacles, into searching for dragons who hadn’t wanted to be found.
And here they were.
“Is it enough?” A spoken question in light of a thousand others.
It takes dying to know
How to live as ghosts
