The Ever Trail - Part 3

Chapter 3 - Ill Portent.

Despite often seeming like it had lost the will to continue, life went on. In a wholly different part of the same city, a stranger with a shadowed face darted through the thick throng of the market district. His name, or so he said, was 'Zephyr'.

Amidst a crowd of many, his Aryan features and ever shifting gaze meant little. All the shells, bells, oils, toys, foods and hawkers were far more interesting than a peculiar stranger with eyes like sky – and that, of course, was good. A bustling world with hardly a second to spare held the outcasts and the accused in a precarious hand, safely away from its searching eyes.

Through this crowd, Zephyr wove past vagrants and pickpockets easily, despite his heavy cloak. He ignored men shouting at other men, or over other men, or generally just shouting in the vague direction of a great many men, also shouting. A woman wailed somewhere, shrill and insistent. Zephyr ignored her too.

It wasn't until he collided with a similarly hooded figure that he awoke from his daydream.

“I beg your pardon, sir.” the grey wool apologised in a soft voice. Then, it was gone, bobbing through the crowd again. Befuddled, Zephyr blinked several times.

“No problem?” Zephyr's words were swallowed by the market's clamour. As he turned to head away, he started when he felt something against his boot – a streak of brilliant russet pawed away, bouncing every few steps. A fox?

The small creature, far from where he belonged, flicked an ear and, quite deliberately, gave Zephyr a cheeky wink. Then, with a swish of his brush, he trotted off after the woman.

Wondering where in his dreams he'd abandoned his last shred of sanity, Zephyr gazed past them to their apparent goal. In the distance, the castle reared from the centre of the city. Could that be it?

He didn't know – didn't care.

Apologising profusely when he crashed into a group of young urchins fighting over gherkins and shards of hard caramel, he stopped backing up and slunk away.

As always, the crowd did not give way and he was the one forced to dodge. As always, nobody would remember him. And as always, he made no move to change this. Dormice and chameleons, after all, had it made.

Now behind him, the market continued to shout at itself and, unheeded, it shrank away.

He picked his way past the chaos and burrowed deeper into the crumbling heart of old Verinn. Either side of him, the walls grew coarse and withered, the paint flaked, the flagstones cracked and the weeds tickled at his boots. Still he wandered on.

When the city seemed about to collapse in on itself, he stopped. He pushed open a tired old door, in a tired old building, in an overall exhausted district. Loudly protesting oak floorboards and boarded up windows, with optimistic pink flowers dotted about, greeted him. Familiar candles spluttered between dusty bottles of rum whose labels hopelessly underestimated their vintage.

“Hello,” he called softly to the young woman, asleep on her book. From inside his black robe, he placed two coins on the scratched surface of the counter. “I'm home.” he smiled.

With a smile in her eyes that gave up and died before it reached her lips, the woman took only one, then handed him the other.

“Home.” she said quietly, and patted his hand. While his skin was full, though pale, hers had already been sapped by an artificial age caused by this place.

In the corner, a pall of smoke and a steady background beat of half-hearted coughing marked the territory of the other regulars. Without another word, Zephyr headed upstairs. As he did, he undid the clasp at his sternum and let the cloak fall off his shoulders. Behind the battered, now locked, door, he clicked the window shut, and turned his back to it with a sigh.

In the gloom of the closed off room, Zephriel spread his wings.

Hidden away from the sun behind a covered window and a worn robe, another man shivered and huddled into his own black wings. From over bent knees a pair of sharp red eyed glared at the wall, and his thin black brows were slanted in displeasure.

The winged man's sight was fixed on nothing in particular. An anonymous tome lay, spine up, looking rather dejected in a pool of candle-light. Around the room a great many strange things were scattered; edges of shapeless cloth were highlighted by the dim glow, many leather bound books lay in orderless herds on furniture that seemed to invite dust but was, in fact, impeccably clean. A glass of water sat half empty on a drawer.

Without warning, the cloaked figure stood and placed his hand over a slight gap in the boards of the window. As if stung, he withdrew his hand and cursed vehemently, clamping his palm to his thin lips and looking even more displeased.

“Too early.” he muttered to himself in the absence of a sentient audience. Gazing at his injured hand, he sighed. Outside, he knew not if the sun was high or low - his body clock has since given up, leaving him to burn his hand at intervals instead. Closing his eyes, he folded against the dresser again, and, hidden in his black cowl, Darax slept.

High above, swathed in clouds, the sun quietly counted out time, and the celestial rings continued to turn. Masked by light, the stars glittered on regardless. Across the globe's restless belly the oceans churned. Continents crawled. Countless things were born – and died.

Fractures appeared in the corners of the sky behind the farthest mountains, and a nameless embryo, curled, shuddered in the tired womb of the earth. Without wont, it slumbered on.

The world began its slow waltz into madness. And nothing saw.