As she fumbled into folds of the past, his confidence sprouted and flourished, nurtured by her indignation, uncurled and uncoiled by her admittance and confessions. He prospered under the gold and glow of irritation and ire, pieced together by the channels of menace, malice, and repose, he chose the former: galvanized by her revelations. Stoked and refined into an agent provocateur, the little beast weighted the outcome of Essetia and Romul’s experiences, puzzled and pieced together the strangled bombardments of their journeys. For him, a tiny infidel bristling and scorching on signs of adventure, on keening and honing the livelihood of his future, on foiling and stumbling about in the dark, in the light, he couldn’t fathom why she wouldn’t reach out and ensnare more diversions, more amusement, in her life. Where was her joy? Her enthusiasm? Had other notions, chances, circumstances, and junctures washed her zeal away? Or did she merely choose not to engage in skirmishes and acts of play, seething and smoldering in wasted days, bent under a serious brow, kneeling beneath a condemning proclamation? He never yearned to be thrust into such a role, forgetting pleasures and diversions for the droll thorns of adulthood and derailment: he craved power, potency, and precision, but not at the cost of his personality and commitment. His devotion was laced and woven to the innards of the Basin walls and the icy caverns, to his friends and companions marauding and conspiring alongside him, to his brethren in arms and alms. With little inhibition, because he sparked and sizzled and granted iniquity into the fathoms of his curiosity, into the deep halls of his intrigue, his princely-crown tipped and tilted, and blue eyes rambled over her features. “Why’d you stop?” What made her flee from entertainment, other than responsibility? Why abandon something that gave one joy, elation, and ebullience?

Her question lanced and harpooned another score of indignation, as if he had no right to linger near his home, still in the midst of its wonderful peaks and its unholy valleys. He was protected here, under the watchful eye of glaciers and icicles, a scion of the promised land, a young infidel reaching across the bounty of time, space, and snow. It was a part of his blood, a soul wrapped in rime and dominion, and one day he’d be able to enact and compose the elements of all these things so proudly scorching inside him. The savage, sinister wane of his eyes narrowed, a caustic, hostile gaze again, as if he were being asked and escorted off of his own premises, set off into the dusk and shadow. His voice came across as emboldened and incensed, shoulders stiffened and unyielding, a cerulean copy of his father, etched and sketched in stone. “Yes. I’m old enough.” No one told him no, no one reached across his mind and swore his destruction. He learned and he trusted, he inquired and mused. He drowned in sagacity and leaned in close to the wiles of chaos. He ventured and played, he reeled and he grasped and he coveted the many ideas and ruminations piqued and stored. He’d already wandered down the brink of sand and dunes, where cliffs met the sky, he’d already marched to the tune of meadows and thistles, and he’d already crossed lines in seas and storms. She wouldn’t tuck him away back into the Basin, not when he’d conspired and rippled across other sovereigns so many times before. She wouldn’t weaken him, she wouldn’t diminish him, and she wouldn’t scatter him like stone, leaping over rock and rubble. He was too much of a noble, too much of a beast, to be enamored into incapacity.


@[Essetia]