Elias & Caden | Afternoon | Town Circle Though you hide yourself from me, I still turn to your face like a flower to the sun. I will seek you through this storm. For what is our anger but a passing squall?
Flowers. There were flowers everywhere, and it was too early in the day for all this fuss. Elias had practised not staring longingly after any opportunity for day-drinking all morning, so he barely batted an eyelash when someone rolled past with ale. He hadn't had much time to indulge since the bombing, and he suspected that if he started now, he might not be able to stop.
The Aurellians were just so strange with their celebration. They celebrated spring by plucking up what looked like every flower they could get their hands on, and the speech the ex-butler gave was more of that messy cud filled with cryptic religious nonsense. The fact that it had been delivered in Clovennian didn't make it any easier to understand, which Elias took as proof that it was pure fantasy.
The revellers lapped it all up hungrily, however, even the story about the woman whose reward for being selfless was being the wife of one of their gods, and then... turning into a bird, which Elias could do without needing to die. And he could walk in his human skin again if he so wished. Granted, he couldn't be anyone's wife, but if that was the only gift their god could afford, then it was, frankly, pathetic.
So, Elias stayed under one of the few non-flowering trees near the Town Circle, his dark jacket making him seem one with the sparse shadow. Unlike everyone milling around him, Elias was well and truly free of flowers, not that there hadn't been likely well-meaning offers, few and far between though they were. The ferocious glower he greeted everyone with kept them all at bay, and the rest just avoided him on principle, likely sensing that he was watching all of them. He hadn't yet found the culprits responsible for the train bombing, and he was just itching for an excuse to start filling his suspects list.
This quaint charade in Aurelle doesn’t suit you, as you are meant for finer things. There are many more delights to partake of, many more luxuries to relish, far from these simple hearts and simpler minds. Will you not indulge me?
Yet, that wasn't the true cause of his unpleasant mood. The letter he had received from Valéry still weighed heavily on his mind, because Elias couldn't disagree with most of what had been written there. Glynn was not where he was meant to be, and he felt that more keenly than ever when everyone around seemed to move to a rhythm he couldn't perceive, let alone follow. Not that he had ever been one to follow.
Elias tapped out a fresh cigarette, one of his last, and caught a familiar figure out of the corner of his eye as he lit up. For a second, he considered walking away, to avoid the problem of fantasy and reality colliding. As much as Elias hated to admit it, he needed his charade with Caden to continue, and it was that shameful weakness that finally made him stay. His eyes were on the bedmate as the younger man approached, and it was not unlike the first time he had laid eyes on him at the Palace.