SOME TIME BEFORE DAWN
Everything about the kintboat was simple and efficient—the family of wicks that lived aboard spanned four generations of grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins and couples, some of their relationships ambiguous but openly caring about each other and their offspring as a group. They fished and dug up river clams, selling them up and down the Arova from the Harbor to Surwood all year long, and so the back and forth trip was just a regular part of their nomadic lives. Farhid was somewhere in the middle, with his grandmother being the elder of their unit along with a great uncle. They made the final decisions, but everyone seemed to have a very cooperative way of living that didn't require too many difficult decisions anyway. While the passive slept, the green-haired healer slept also, exhausted from his extensive use of vroo. Though, the next day, he was at it again, finishing the healing work he'd began until the passive was perhaps better off than he'd been in weeks.
Sarinah was given as much or as little space as she desired while Tristaan slept like a stone—always offered opportunities to help here and there or to sit quietly, to have conversation or to be alone. There were a handful of curious children who would peek in on the sleeping passive who'd been dragged onto their home bloodied and angry, but those children were just as curious about the olive-skinned dancer and her fleeting smile.
Even after he stirred to wakefulness the next day, however, the dark-haired passive barely spoke, had little interest in eating, and mostly did what he could to hide in the room he was given once properly washed and insistently fed. He was grateful, perhaps, but struggled to show it, obviously so afraid of himself and even more terrified of anything else happening to innocent people around him who didn't deserve the bizarre mental destruction he now knew he was capable of. He feigned more exhaustion than he felt, for while he was still sore even after the magical healing, he was so used to enduring much more that he would have functioned just fine had he needed to.
But, surely, no one really needed him.
Or at least, they shouldn't.
She shouldn't.
Not anymore. He'd gotten her out of the Rose, but at what cost? Had he really made things better? Or worse? He didn't know anymore and he didn't want to talk about it. He didn't want to talk about anything, not really, the blurred vision of his diablerie's effect on the street near the Market seared into his memory with pain.
Tristaan had lived his whole life after his eighth birthday aware of what he was, and yet he'd only experienced the diablerie's of others. He often fantasized that his test scores had been wrong and he was just as much a galdor as he should have been, that his lack of a field was because he had never been formally introduced to magic ... not because he wasn't capable.
Now, oh now, he knew the truth. And the truth was he was just another scrap.
His normal hours of waking and sleeping were so different from the Deep Water spokes who had been nothing but kind to him—too kind, saving his life and all—that it was easy to crawl back to the room he and Sarinah had been given during the daytime hours and stare at the handcrafted wood walls of the kintboat or look out the small window in the small room, hiding under blankets and not answering the door. They shared the room, however, and slept in it, and while the warmth of the lovely witch's comfort called to him in ways he couldn't put into words, he found every reason to avoid her, to keep them just separated enough that he didn't surrender to his fiery need to hold her and be held.
It was perhaps a little cruel after all they had been through, after all that she deserved in praise and heartfelt unspoken things, but the dark-haired passive was so caught up in fear of himself and fear of his lack of worthiness that he did nothing to reach out to the one person who needed him as much as he needed her.
Tristaan resisted everything for as long as he could stand it, until he felt half-mad with silence and hurt. The Arova gurgled and rushed by outside the small open window, reflecting half a moon and stars and the shadows of trees along the bank. The wicks steering at night were awake near the prow and their laughter while they played games to pass the Houses drifted through the living quarters with warmth. Grey eyes studied now-familiar wood grain in the sliding door of the closet, curled up under covers in the darkness, listening to the lovely witch behind him breathe quietly, assuming she was asleep by now in the strange hours just before dawn.
His thoughts raced like Roalis' dragonflies over the water's surface—fast and random, darting suddenly and hovering some others. He had fought with all that he had for Sarinah's freedom, and for what? To ignore her? It was foolish, and he ached for her voice as much as he longed for her touch. What could he really say? What was there to make things alright when he feared he would never be ... well ... anything? Anything other than trash or trouble, at least.
There was a shift in the lovely witch's field and Tristaan couldn't help but wince, assuming she was dreaming but biting his lip as if to muster his resolve anyway, the dark-haired passive rolled over and through the purposeful space between them until he hovered behind her, hesitant. He didn't know what to say and he wasn't sure if he should say anything. He just couldn't take the quiet any more and he knew, without a doubt, that he wanted her near himself, not far away, that he needed her more than he understood. His heart raced in his chest with fear but he moved to place a calloused hand lightly against the olive-skinned dancer's back,
"Sarinah—" He meant to wake her, if she was sleeping, yet his voice was barely above a whisper in the dark, weighed down by a nervousness he wasn't used to and a sadness he was, "—I've been hidin' an' I'm sorry. I ent been—I'm no'—I don't really know what t' say. Epaemo."
It was his turn to say those words, or so he thought, though he couldn't apologize for his birthright—he couldn't change from being the broken thing he was born as all those years ago. Far from the Harbor, free but most likely wanted for a price, he'd almost died for this freedom, for hers, and he didn't even know what to do with it all. With the lovely witch.
Or, maybe he did and that understanding was just as scary as how well he now knew himself.
to doors we were not meant to open.
— Passive Proverb