Re: The Icarus/The Fallen
“Mm,” he meted confirmation in a scattered sort of hum, vowels and consonants trapped inside his slash of a mouth. It didn’t catch him broadside that Enlil knew what it was to be detritus cast aside. ‘Adrift’ didn’t always mean what it did for Nathaniel: to be the heir apparent of collapse and suffocating disappointment. To share in that - well, perhaps it could be holes poked in the boxtops so that they could breathe. “So we both believed ourselves both more great and terrible. Where I was, it was less a paradise than most would want to believe. But I’m not sure that men have words to describe it proper. If we do, they’re probably in German - they’ve got words for everything.”
And there - did you see it? The silver flicker, like a minnow through sunlit waters? That was humor, trailing behind in the wake of the most words he’d ever pained to put together. Somehow a small, wry smile had knotted itself into the corner of Nathaniel’s mouth. Musn’t look directly at it. “The daily evolution of bankruptcy?” He sighed and the smile drooped, and the slope began to work its way back into his broad shoulders. “I’m afraid that’s a metaphor that resonates.” Like a machinist's hammer on the edge of a bell.
He watched Enlil watching his hand and was struck by a pang in the lower quadrant of his gut. Fear, but not of pain. Only that he’d stepped firmly over a line in the sand that he’d missed in his survey. Too assuming in his unbidden touch, when touch was not even something he’d ever learned to enjoy in his own time. But rather than bucking in a whip’s recoil, the taller man simply smiled and called him a fool.
Nathaniel parried the smile with one of his own, though it took a while to ramp up in fits and starts. His muscles still twitched like they were spring-loaded and set on a timer’s delay, as he stood and made to follow the man when he led the way. “You’ve only just figured that out?”