“… Why did you ask her that?”
Áesta glances calmly up at Jarl from his spot beside him, pitch black lashes (which look dark green for half a second) catching fluffy snowflakes that look like diamonds on inky silk filigree. The effect is mimicked in his hair much like it had been back in Bailenac’ringy—but the lighting was different, then: it had been midmorning when last snow caught in the daemon’s clothes and hair, making Jarl think THINGS.
Now, it is midevening: passed dusk but before the black of true night…
And Áesta looks even more like a starry sky than before.
(Even more lovely…)
~
Áesta’s pupils are pink.
Like the time they were in the boat with Cael…
And the time before that when Jarl PROMISED Áesta he’d PROTECT him…
But not like the first time—when they became a soft pale pink like flower petals—when they were still home and Jarl wasn’t as comfortable with feeding Áesta as he’s surprisingly becoming now.
(It changes… the color… depending on what he’s being fed… this is… hot pink… it’s…)
~
Jarl’s thoughts are cut off as Áesta looks away.
He isn’t sure but he’s fairly certain the daemon’s eyes are still glowing: little rounded rhombuses burning pink in the center of his faux jewel-like green eyes. Tiny pink stars in evergreen skies… binary petals in a forest...
Áesta’s cheek moves and catches a snowflake and Jarl thinks he’s smiling—at him.
(Can he hear my thoughts, too???)
“Ah wanted…” The tiny devil’s voice drifts off, vanishing into the darkness of the looming night and local noise. They’re on a main road now—not the one their hotel is on but the one intersecting it; it allowed them to travel south from that road and towards the Tourist Tower; so, now they use it in reverse.
As does everyone else.
Wagons and cars, alike, join them in their trek back home as the night draws near and closing time is long here. Jarl wonders, briefly, if Mademoiselle Grape will be ok or even turning in any time soon before turning his attention back to his counterpart—his partner—whom walks quietly beside him.
He wonders if Áesta will actually answer him—tell him what he wants—or not.
Surprisingly, he does (although, whether Jarl is shocked by his answer or that he answered at all is unknown): “Ah wanted to know if ‘e were like me.”
~
Jarl balks.
For a moment, he wants to scream. He wants to slap Áesta silly, shake him until his teeth rattle, and just… SCREAM: HOW could they be anything alike; WHAT similarities could there possibly be; WHY think that—‽
And then he breathes.
At first, it was to say—any of those things. But, then, the breath cleared his mind and he suddenly realized: since when did he believe Áesta WASN’T like them—like Kane or any other daemon. They’re monsters.
All of them.
(Right?)
“Like you…? How?”
Jarl watches Áesta—watches him shrink in the darkening cold and become so small that it feels like a great distance is expanding between them as they live and breathe—and feels his heart ache.
But he can’t fathom why.
~
“Ah wanted friendship.”
Áesta toes and kicks at the ground, releasing the snow gathered there back into the air and onto himself—as though he knows what it does to himself and, thus, to Jarl and his perception of him. (Maybe he does.)
He looks lost—lonely—like Jasey did when he wanted to play but had no one to play with (but Jarl).
“Ah t’ought… maybe ‘e does too…?”
~
Jarl isn’t sure what to say to that.
On one hand: he has a daemon with him here that DOES seem to only want a friend he can rely on. One like Manus whom always seems willing to lend a hand, a meal, or a kind word to their now mutual daemon… Or even like Hagen whom now seems interested, invested, and intrigued by their little daemon companion…
On the other… is that not what makes him unique?
Special?
(Theirs?)
(Then
again: after everything he’s done—everything he’s STILL doing—he can’t bring
himself to add HIM to the list: to say that HE is a friend willing, in any way,
to help Áesta—because a part of him isn’t…)
~
(But…)
Then, there’s the evidence: the stuff this guy, Kane, DOES that EVERYONE notices—everyone REPEATS.
Kane takes CARE of Jasey; feeds him, clothes him, shelters him; he even ENTERTAINS him.
These are the things a friend—especially an older, caretaker-like one—would do.
So…
~
They don’t talk after that.
Not for the rest of the trip back, anyway.
Instead, they travel in a tense silence; their thoughts the only words.
It’s just him, Áesta, and the cars travelling like their own little pocket dimensions on the street.
(Jarl wonders, privately,
if Áesta’s eyes are still glowing—still suns in this, now, silent and somber
night—or if they’ve now dimmed because of him into nothing but pitch black
holes in the slowly emptying dark sky… or if, perhaps, they still glow: but as
something other than burning pink petals on the forest floor…)
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