All my life I’ve been searching for something

“I wish I knew,” he laughed, eyes closing briefly at the notion, then opening again to stare along the deepening valley, the rise and fall of the earth, giving thanks to the aforementioned lake and its dazzling surface as they wandered by. He had half a notion to spring across its depths and pretend it was truly chiseled – made of firm steel or hardened veneer, but it’d only be his own magic at play, allowing him to chisel past its depths without sinking below its surface, proffering him an arena to skirmish upon, or ghosts lining the edges, where his father had last crawled down to the embankment for his final breath. “Perhaps it’s simply magic,” he winked again, but bestowed his actual thoughts on the notion too, sketching along the foundation of machinations and calculations, all the scholarly wares his mother had tried to bestow him upon. “Or the God of Time’s work. It wouldn’t surprise me if we had some sort of warmth beneath it too, like our hot springs.” He shrugged, not giving it much thought thereafter, but paused, allowed the Mountain to stand there for as long as she wished, quiet and unassuming, nearly a piece of the landscape himself, born to the wild, to the rocks, to the caverns.
 
When they resumed, when she spoke of living back in the Edge, his stare widened, segmented back upon her for a riveting moment – pondered over the sigh and its attributes, if she was unhappy there, or if she merely yearned to return to the famed Hidden Falls (where he’d always wanted to go as a child, where he’d wanted to run and hunt with his friend Adelric, before he disappeared and then subsequently returned on the Basin’s doorstep; one more aspiration unfulfilled). Perhaps she missed her throne, her people, her allegiances – he could understand that. “I visited there once, with my father,” the words slipped out before he could stop them, and then he swallowed, choked down, the rest of the melancholy crawling over his senses, ignored Orsino’s hasty hiss, tried to prevent any other ounce of anguish from boiling, from brewing, from incensing and running along his form; he was strong, he was capable, he was hidden. “It seemed pleasant enough,” the General tried another smile, but it felt forced, rough around the edges, and he trudged on ahead still, running away from his losses, his stupidity, his desolation. They passed a few caves here and there – and the youth acknowledged them with a bob of his head, indicating their place in the precipice, before they ambled closer and closer to her chosen destination – the greenhouse’s glassy exterior rising from the distance. “In fact, one of your Glaziers made the greenhouse for us. Our healers were very grateful.”

(something never comes)

erebos

never leads to nothing—nothing satisfies

but I’m getting close