Audemus Dawnspark

Coalescence

His sleep had been short-lived, and what little he had managed was fitful, the cocktail of drugs and alcohol leaving his system leaving him in a decidedly wakeful state. It is not difficult to untwine his own restless limbs from the sprawl of pale, forever ones, but he does it slowly nonetheless — breath hitched, mindful of the slightest stir. Nothing. He wonders if it is a credit to his stealthiness or merely luck, helped along by a circadian rhythm that is not his — but is.

He gravitates towards the largest bookshelf in this space, overburdened and cluttered with an eclectic mix: stolen books, a forgotten spore cultivar that has likely become its own ecosystem, the bleached lower mandible of a dragon. His interest lies in a moderately sized wooden box, filigreed around the edges, stashed away on the lowest sill and containing a gift purchased on a whim.

In this quiet darkness, he shrouds the present with his body as he carefully opens it, faint arcane glow emanating from the enchanted threadwork within. Reverent fingers are smoothed along the neatly folded curtains, dragging along the imagery of endless rain. His fingers are chilly, just like wet weather, but when are they not?

It is not something suited for his tastes — afterall, he has chosen to keep his most valuable possessions secreted away in an Underbelly hideout that doesn’t even have windows, much less a view of anything beyond the occasional back alley assault or murder. It is a view his companion prefers (Friend? Inamorato? More?): a drizzly blue-grey mantle accompanied by the steady pitter-patter cadence of droplets against a foggy window.

There are many things he has found that do not suit him, but that he finds he is willing to endure with no (little) complaint. He may not listen, but he sees.

The box is closed, the luminescence snuffed: he has been waiting for the right moment to give this away, but will there ever be a good time? In his mind’s eye, he imagines an hourglass: the sands rapidly drifting, time nearly spent. Have you always been so fatalistic, or is it just the comedown?

He uses his finger, burning the soft grain with a slanting, flourishy script. For when the weather isn’t right. It smells like the end of a burning cigarette, quashed in anger against a wooden nightstand. He leaves the box nestled beneath the leather physician’s bag on the floor.

Slipping back under the patchwork quilt, he huddles his body back into the now-cooled divot that only half-remained. A questing set of fingers comes to curl possessively around his wrist.

He remains occupied for a time, before sleep would claim him again, drawing aimless patterns on the skin of the slumber-warmed body that laid next to him. Swirling figure eights, plunging into the dip of a lower back; a network of constellations —  dredged up from a memory of an astronomy lesson from ages past — along the curve of a pointed shoulder; his name, where the echo of a heartbeat pulsed most noticeably through a prominent rib cage.