Re: [Secondhand books: Hannah & Aleksi] What. Not who, which was Aleksi’s reminiscence of his own history. But what, and therein laid the difference, the bubbled warps in the mirror. Aleksi felt another tug of that tether as well, not in the least because, “I am not like other people either.” He wondered, briefly, if that not being like the rest was related to the lack of a heartbeat he kept searching for instinctually, though ultimately he decided it didn’t really matter. They were different, and that was okay, and maybe they could be different together in ways that others wouldn’t understand.
Nodding, because he’d seen some of those small weirdnesses here too - the lack of life in the forest jumped to mind immediately - but he wasn’t sure what that meant. It was the same yet different, the same duality he’d managed to find everywhere. He froze at her question, no matter how much it made sense of her to ask it. “It is nothing but ash and ruins,” he answered, just above a whisper, and he had to close his eyes for a moment as he said it, feeling the pain of that statement in the center of his chest. It was very dead, though not long gone, not really. Sometimes he realized abruptly that he hadn’t actually processed that loss, not really. Just in bits and pieces, in small, random moments - like this one. He had to blink his eyes open, so that he wasn’t assaulted with the visual memories of it as well. “The monsters burnt it to the ground.”
He smiled softly, no longer quite as sad as he answered, thanks to that question and the answer it provoked. “Sieglinde. I heard her barking, and it guided me to a way out,” Aleksi explained. “I wound up in the orchard, with Dietre.” How he’d escaped was an entirely different story from how he’d survived that place, though he was certain he’d answer honestly to that as well, if that had been what she’d asked. She hadn’t shied away from his beast in the dream, no matter how inaccurate of a representation it had been, and Aleksi felt sure that she wouldn’t run balk it now either.
Her story captured him, and he listened as she told it, barely breathing for fear of interruption. A haunted house didn’t sound crazy. Not in the least, not given the things he knew also inhabited the world. And his boyfriend could see ghosts, so no, he wasn’t particularly surprised by her story. But that didn’t stop his heart from hurting for her. The nightmare she’d lived through sounded far worse than what they’d gone through together - fittingly, it seemed, since they’d both been running away from their down pasts trying to claim them again.
“My mother died of cancer. Before... all of the rest of it,” he offered softly in return, hating that there was that specific commonality between them. “How old were you?”