#this concept though

Favorite releases of 2017 -

Ugh. Yes but no. This is so good but hurts so very much.

What about Hypnos kids who can no longer tell the difference between sleeping and awake, who spend so much time in nightmares they think normal waking hours are just good dreams.

𝙱𝙻𝙰𝙲𝙺 𝚂𝙰𝙸𝙻𝚂 𝚂𝙴𝙽𝚃𝙴𝙽𝙲𝙴 𝙼𝙴𝙼𝙴  /  𝙰𝙲𝙲𝙴𝙿𝚃𝙸𝙽𝙶

      𝙷𝙴 𝚂𝙼𝙸𝙻𝙴𝚂, 𝙰𝙽𝙳 𝚃𝚄𝚁𝙽𝚂 𝙰𝙲𝚁𝙾𝚂𝚂 𝙷𝙸𝚂 𝚂𝙷𝙾𝚄𝙻𝙳𝙴𝚁,  to look back at Solas where he is standing behind him in the narrow alley. The street is paved of purple stones, laid here and there with yellow, to make a pattern like the change of light on water very early in the morning. It’s hot, and the air is thick with humidity, the sky shrouded heavy with clouds. There’s a need for rain, an absence of pressure that indicates a storm long coming, perched at the edge of its beginning. A distinct green in the shade of the light. Once the rain begins, it will continue to rain for days on end.

      Solas is barefoot in the road. There is paint on his sleeves where they are rolled past his elbows and his hair is knotted at the back of his head. He was somewhere else, moments before this. Aragorn allows it, and goes along, and makes no effort to shift the scene. It is pleasant enough to him, familiar in a way that aches. When he inhales, the air is rich with the smells of the cookshops and the tea houses, with the fragrant promise of the rain. He feels the thrill of newness, of anonymity. It sings in his blood:  a boyish delight.

      His smile widens,  “That is a tale often told me, my friend.”

      They are not friends. The fabric of that fact shimmers visibly between them.

      “Fate scatters seeds. We collect the ones we may. A ship is safer at harbour, but that is not what a ship is for.”

       He has a boy’s curiosity, mirth, too, in this moment, though he is a man who has lived well past most men. At eighty, Aragorn has the face of one nearer to thirty. His eyes are full of his soul, a curiosity, brighter now than they seemed in the waking world where everything is dulled with a lower cunning. Where everything is more brutal, and more real.

      “What is this place? I smell things that I have never smelled before—and yet I know them. Fried bananas, and hot milk tea.”

      In the distance, cart wheels clatter over smooth stones.

      “We are in Rivain.”

       The realization rises out of him, and Aragorn turns quickly to see the end of the street. He is just in time to see it. There, emerging from an alchemist’s shop with a bundle wrapped in parchment beneath her arm, is his mother. Her long black hair a gleaming river, soft and haloed in the humidity, draped underneath a wrap of pink silk to conceal her face, the faint sloped shape of her ears. Her hair, yes, and her eyes, the familiar graceful sureness of her gait. Just as she steps into the road, it begins to rain at last. Like mercy or a sigh, a great weight splitting open in the sky.

      Gilraen hurries on light feet past them both, to a tea shop beneath a red cloth awning. There, a little boy is waiting. Skinny, big-eyed, with a surly look. She takes his hand, the child smiles, and they go out into the rain together. The mother is happy here, in this country. In this city. The boy is happy when the mother is happy, though he knows they will not be able to stay. They never stay anywhere for long. The two of them disappear down the twist of the road, into one of a dozen alleys leading from this alley. Road by road, deeper into the drumming heart of the Dairsmuid slums.

      Aragorn barely resists the urge to follow. He could return them, if he wanted, just to see her again, to see the love in her face for the child whose hand she is holding, but it is better to let them go. In all his foolish years, it is perhaps the only lesson that he has learned well.

      If he followed them to the rented room where they will sleep, he could linger beneath the threshold, in the rain and out of it, in the fine mist that it makes where the curtain of the downpour breaks against the doorway;  he could stand there and watch his mother as she lay awake beside him in the night, counting his every breath. It would be painful, to see that fear in her face again.

      Solas has made his point.

      The rain has soaked his hair, and Aragorn pushes the unruly dark mass back from his brow with both hands. He closes his eyes, and laughs. The rain falls in his mouth, and it is warm. Nearly as warm as the air. His tunic sticks to the shape of his body, long and lean and starkly-boned on a sharp inhale. Youthful in that way, too, gangly in his height, wide of shoulder and long-limbed. Aragorn shakes his head, and turns to face Solas fully. Behind the mage is the shadow of where his mother walked. Beneath the red awning of the tea shop, two empty chairs flank a small wooden table, sheltered from the downpour. Now, there is a water kettle, fresh from some fire, and two glass cups. Solas doesn’t care for tea, but he will care for this—heavy with milk, sweetened with cinnamon and ginger. He has not said so, but Aragorn knows. Just as he had known the smell of the fried bananas, Solas will know already the taste of the tea.