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At first, the quiet had bothered him. It had been a gentle bothering, soft and beneath the surface of the skin. It had been a weight between his shoulder blades when he had been a young colt, all long limbs and awkward angles. He had spent hours skirting around the kingdom, the pale gold of him moving between the snow drifts, wings folding up and insulating him from the cold. He had been hungry for the sight of others—watching them from afar and then watching them from closer when he was feeling brave. He had listened to the meetings that his father had called, watching the way that he had commanded the kingdom.
Dreaming of a day when he would peel himself from solitude and join the ranks.
(He had liked to imagine his father smiling down, proud, when he did.)
But that day had never come. Instead, Tobiah yielded to the pull of the quiet. He had submerged himself into the still waters of it. The bothering had subsided then, the violent tide pulling inward into a simmer and then silence—the waters of his life deep and undisturbed by ripples. Then, the quiet had become a solace, a comfort, and, eventually, an armor. He had stopped flickering his ears toward the sound of horses nearby, stopped straining for the sounds of conversation. He had instead withdrawn, gravitating further into the barren wilderness, spending his days near and even beyond the wall surrounding the kingdom.
He did not shadow his father’s reign or listen in on the meetings. He had not even known when his father had stepped down from the throne and when the new king, her father, had ascended. He had stopped caring. It seemed simpler that way—safer. There was no danger when you did not hand anyone the blade.
He grew puzzled at her question and he pressed his lips together in thought, dropping his Roman nose to the ground to give himself a second to contemplate it. For several more seconds, longer than was necessary, silence reigned between them, and he wondered if he never spoke again, if she would simply dissolve into the background—leaving him once more to the quiet nothingness of his existence. Some part of him knew she wouldn’t though; she was the type to be a burr, clinging stubbornly.
(He wondered why he did not mind it.)
“I can’t say that I have ever worried about it,” he finally offered, shrugging. “I think being alone is good.” At her next question, his lips pulled into a smile, but the warmth of it did not quite reach his eyes. This was a weapon, he knew, and he did not trust it—but at least he could guard himself against it. “My thoughts are not particularly interesting.” Or, if they were, they were not something he wanted to share.
“The magic has gone?” he asked, again before he could stop himself, his expression stripped bare for a moment with surprise. “What happened?” He had heard rumblings of war but largely dismissed it; his life was to be too long, too expansive for him to overly care for the day-to-day politics of the land. But for the magic to have drained away? That was something to pique his interest. He took an unbidden step forward, unknowingly closing the distance between them as his ears perked in the tangled thicket of his forelock.
“What do you think about when you are alone in your caves, Australis?” his voice softer than it had been, gentle with curiosity as he wondered about the thoughts that tangled in her mind when she was by herself. Were they dreams that made her eyes go warm and large? Were they adventures that made her pulse quicken in her throat? Two thoughts struck him. First, that he truly wanted to know, and, second, that they were rather close, the sweetness of her breath steaming the air. In response, he took a step back, pale eyes moving from her face to the ground as he fought the urge to give in to his invisibility and hide once more.
tobiah