Consider:
Essek Thelyss is not consecuted.
Caleb Widogast is.
——
Essek finds an uninvited, unprompted guest outside his office, interrupting his carefully held solitude. While the door remains open as he works at the university, few have the temerity to approach and pass his threshold. Fewer and fewer still, these years.
When they continue to hover past the point where most turn away, courage failing them, Essek deigns to glance over. Just one figure.
A student, perhaps, come to track down the renowned researcher and specialist of Dunamancy. He has the look of one, weedy and thin and unfinished. Still hungry to learn, and all but quivering in place with nerves, young even for a human. Essek does not turn his head and merely waits, watching indirectly as the human briefly clutches his opposite arms for reassurance. Checking on the presence of books beneath his coat, he thinks, because he is familiar with the gesture.
At last the young man steps inside the door, taking a deep breath before starting. The voice is wrong, two entirely different accents warring for his tongue, “Herr Thelyss, you have not changed.”
Essek’s head snaps up from his papers instantly. A stranger’s face wears a wry, lopsided smile that he would never be able to forget. The young man continues, “It is reassuring to know some things are a constant in the face of time.”
He pushes up to his feet, thankful for the reflex to float that means he does not lose his balance as he rises, and that his rush is not quite so obvious and unseemly as he moves to greet the other. He stops just one stride short out of some modicum of decorum and caution. (Surely this would be the best way for an enemy to approach him but since when has he had enemies that he could not be certain he could face?) Automatically, he adjusts his height from the ground to meet the unremarkable brown eyes directly.
The intellect and soul that shines back at him from within cannot be denied.
Caleb, because it must be Caleb, smiles back at him, almost equally unsteady, “Twenty three years and four months and five days, if I have done my math correctly. I am afraid I am not quite sure about the difference in hours and minutes between my departure and my arrival.”
Essek finally finds his voice, as shaky as his hands, “For once I find I do not care about the math."
Caleb reaches out first, long thin fingers wrapping around Essek’s, tight and sure. Unspoken, they agree, too long. Given permission, Essek folds him close, letting Caleb bury his head in the shoulder of his mantle. He does the same, entirely certain he is going to come away with his robes covered in cat fur from the coat. (A familiar problem he is delighted to have again.) This incarnation of Caleb is taller than the last, skin no longer pale as milk, shoulders spindly and wiry as if the same mass has been stretched to a finer gauge. Essek cannot possibly care less about any differences in container given the contents are the same. He still smells of wood smoke and incense, amber and ink.
"You have kept your promise." Caleb glances over his shoulder once, eyes bright, "And your doors open.”
If he were to risk loosing his hand from Caleb’s coat, Essek would have smacked him. As it is, he snorts and tries for levity, voice not quite even, “It is engraved on the steps. In many languages. I would hope you could read at least one of them.”
“I remember putting them there." Caleb pulls back only enough to meet his gaze, studying his face, as if he could possibly forget any of the details. "For the school. Not for your office.”
There are gold and amber suns hidden in the brown of his eyes. Essek thinks that makes perfect sense, and that he could happily spend all the time at his disposal charting the new orbits and constellations therein. He does not quite let go, but slides his grip from Caleb’s shoulders to his lapels, hands resting against the rise and fall of his chest, above the beating of his heart. His own is racing unfairly. “I will always keep my word to you.”
“And now I know to speak true to you.” Caleb smiles gently, bringing his own hands up to clasp Essek’s. “There will be no more goodbyes, Herr Thelyss. Only, auf wiedersehen."
