does the dark feel warmer than the light now; isakov

[sleaze]

I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
tell you my sins so you can sharpen your knife

He has thought often of the boy, and the peace that came with him.
He had not questioned it – still doesn’t, not really – had instead fallen into it like a starving man into a feast. The way the quiet has risen in him, soothed his frenetic mind in a way he had not known since before his world had been upended, his reality thinned to near-transparency.
He never put a name to it, what had happened, his lips skimming across him, river-water at their knees, but oh, he dreams of it. Sleaze is surprised at the joy of having good memories to reflect back on, as so many of his are pained or unremarkable.
He has looked for him, in passing, but never found him. Beqanna is a large place, and he supposes he may never find him again, and will be left with only the brief memory, worn to the smoothness of sea-glass.

He is back at the river, though at its bank rather than in the water. The sound of it is comforting, the way the ground is softer here, beneath his feet. He watches the water as he moves, half-hypnotized, and when he looks up he has to blink, because there he is – Isakov.
He does blink, and the form does not change, only drifts into sharper focus. Sleaze takes a step closer, but he is downwind of him, and cannot catch his scent, cannot affirm him to be real and not some mirage.
“Isakov?”
His name is a question and Sleaze still doesn’t know the answer. His mind can be so unreliable, sometimes.

Sleaze

@[isakov]...if you don't mind i miss them!!