when I pretend everything is what I want it to be

I look exactly like what you had always wanted to see

Their sport, once lively and animated, illuminated by the energy of sunlight and a soundtrack of birdsong, took a graceless stumble into something Roland had not anticipated. Beyond Lena’s last jesting remark, caught by the Thief and cast away with a soft laugh, the mood did not keep once their conversation turned to confession and candor. The Time Mender’s gaze fell to tracing the outlines of plants and petals, along the reeds and fronds that curled over them like the protective arch of a bird’s wings. She seemed nervous, which only stoked the apprehension stirring in Roland’s chest. He found himself tilting his head to the side, a discreet effort to capture her gaze and see what he might find within her dark eyes. Thankfully his answer came soon enough, spoken carefully, as if anxious to tread upon new ground.

Lost, alone, detached… The Thief could be all of those things, still; but less so, now that he had found a home. Though, he still retained a tendency to wander at times, and every once and a while the feeling of being captive, chained to stone and ore, would grow to be too much, and he would have to escape the northerly mountains in order to breathe. It had been difficult at first, but given time Roland had grown used to the heavy snows and chilling winds, the walls of rock barring him in on all sides. He was no longer lost.

Yet surprisingly, for one who so often wielded charisma and charm, he endured near constant solitude and seclusion. This was due in part, surely, to the fact that he had grown up practicing the habit of keeping his distance, avoiding attachments and friendships and anything else that might jeopardize his way of life or line of work, and he had dug himself so viciously into that rut that there was little hope of finding his way out of it again. Not for lack of trying though, for in the Basin he had known more companions and allies than he had met in all his life. Now that this dishonest work was not so often required- those acts of deception and duplicity he had thrived off of for so long- he had grown more into the role of a bodyguard, a silent soldier at the heels of his leaders, the helm of servitude, another representative to fly the flag of their kingdom when treaties and negotiations needed signing. And with this, where he was not required to cheat or delude, to exploit his target’s weaknesses and play to each and every one of them as if fine tuning an instrument, molding, chiseling, carving his being into something that would fall into step with the eccentricities of this victim; that sharpness, that Machiavellian cunning, had faded away. If he was still alone and detached, it should not have been enough to keep her worried.

Lena’s question tugged him gently from his musings, a wary few words that seemed, if Roland was not mistaken, to have some hidden meaning sewn between their emboldened chorus. The Thief’s gaze flitted away from her face in speculation, searching the grasses, the water, as if looking for an answer in a reflection or shadow, one that would not wound or give cause for concern; but he could find nothing, any certainty slipping out of his grasp like grains of sand. “I don’t know,” he admitted truthfully.

There was comfort to be found in both solitude and company. At herd meetings, when the valley was filled to the brim with every soldier, sleuth and shaman under the flag of the Aurora Basin, he was not at ease. Yet in small groups he was in his element, pulling strings with the fraudulent vernacular of a trickster. If Lena thought for a moment that she was a nuisance to him, he would be quick to correct her. How could she be a burden, when he had her to thank for everything? For without her kindness, her convincing words, planting that seed of an idea in his mind, he would have passed through Helovia and beyond its borders without a second thought. He might never have found his way to their realm of wind and stone had it not been for the reverence with which she’d spoken of the north.

“I’d like it if you stayed,” he added after a heavy moment’s silence, fixing her with a softy smiling look. For all his words could be ambiguous, coaxing and swerving into the malicious, the devious, the manipulative, as easily as he could lie, comfort, or assuage, he had nothing but unadorned honesty for her.

@[Lena]