So many had lost so much in the shake-up while he, seemingly, had lost nothing. He had no gifts to rip from his grasp. He had no home from which to be yanked from beneath him. He had been a vagabond, a wanderer—homeless, for perhaps the first time in his life. All then he had lost were memories. Places where he could still see Joelle and his children, where his memory was anchored. The loss of the Gates and the Jungle were heavy blows—crippling even. It had been difficult to breathe around them.
Guilt had warred in his chest. A certainty that he was somehow responsible for the pain he saw on every one he passed. Hours had passed since the initial trauma, and many had found their way down the mountain, but confusion was still thick in the air around them. Homes no longer existed. Places where they had been born and raised. Where wars had been waged and life had blossomed and love discovered.
All of that had bled away; all of it had left them naked and alone in a seemingly foreign land.
He almost doesn’t see her when she approaches, her voice startling him out of the deep rivers of his own thoughts. “Oh, hello there!” his voice was husky and thick as if from slumber. He tilted his head slightly at her, wondering briefly if ‘strange’ was indeed her name or a descriptor, before he shrugged his scarred shoulders and went with it. “It is nice to meet you, Strange. My name is Magnus.” His smile was crooked, but warm, and he took a second to evaluate her in the manner he had become accustomed in the last few hours, taking inventory to make sure she was unscathed—no blood, no open wounds.
“How are you doing? It has been a tense day.”
magnus
![[Image: gqYjsHr.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/KjqNDKxc/gqYjsHr.png)