teilo watched and waited for the words that would come. he wasn't sure what they would entail. nothing good, he supposed. "right," he repeated, stepping over a rock so as not to slip.
then came what he had anticipated. the words regarding the ghosts, that denoted his isolation in the truest of its forms. in a camp full of people who had found kinship with one another due to their godly heritage, he thought it funny that he was one of the only ones who could not claim the same prize. left to fend for himself with a pocket watch and a few spectral beings that he had believed, for a while, to have been hallucinations - tricks of a broken mind. teilo wasn't quite sure which version of events he preferred. if all of this was real, if he hadn't been plunged into a mental sewer, creating fantasies and living in them, then the situation became stark. reality would kick in. maybe he preferred when he didn't know who his blasted father was.
aiden stopped talking, and teilo realised that there weren't many 'yes' or 'no' questions to answer. just the open request, the reminder that this wasn't normal, not by any means, and he was left trying to piece together what was useful information and what wasn't. "i never paid attention to them. i tried not to," he corrected himself quickly. "i was - i was in one of the smallest villages in the country. back end of nowhere, that was me. if someone died, everyone knew about it. so the first time, when i saw one, i just thought it was weird. and when i talked about it, they brushed it off as grief. i didn't even know the woman." a pause. "it kept happening, though, and my mam was getting worried. thought that it meant something. her husband, my stepdad, he got me to a doctor's as soon as he could. i was a quiet kid. hallucinations weren't really much of a surprise to them." he thought of his mother then - the look on her face as he revealed the nature of his visions. "i think she knew. what i was, i mean. she never told me. i don't know if she thought that if we hid in the quietest little settlement then nothing could get to us, but they did."
"i had this mate -" a pause. a stutter of the brain. was he going to divulge this? "i told him everything, and he thought it was fantastic. he said that he kept dreaming about me in america, saving the world. i thought it was the comics we read together, making him think i was bigger than i was. and i don't know what the thing was. but a thing came, in the middle of the night - they thought it was a dog, but i didn't see a dog -" he trailed off a bit. "this was last year. it's a bit muddled. but, um, i saw him. when no-one else could see him. and he stuck around. made it a lot less difficult. and at one point, he told me that i had to go to america. that he didn't think the dreams were just a child's wild imagination, running with strange happenings. so i did. i never told my mam where i was going. i'm just gone to them." he raised his eyebrows. "i don't know if he's still out there, outside the camp. i don't know if i'll leave for the quest and end up looking for him the whole time, only to find that he's - he's moved on."
"point is, i know that the ghosts are useful. but they're evidence of stuff that i, most of the time, don't really want to deal with. they're kids, sometimes. they don't even know why - or they're women in wedding dresses, looking confused and sad. i don't know where i play into all of this. don't even know if it'll be of any use to anyone." he shook his head, realised he'd been rambling. "sorry. i don't know if any of that helped. i shouldn't have -" a short, sharp sigh that created a puff of mist in front of him. "never got to talk about it. not every day you're cracking quiet jokes with your mate at their funeral."
-
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𝚘𝚛𝚒𝚗 '𝚕𝚘𝚏𝚝𝚢' 𝚐𝚘𝚛𝚖𝚊𝚗
big house
zeus(t1) - counselor
mentioned: jamie,
ophelia
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𝚘𝚛𝚒𝚗 '𝚕𝚘𝚏𝚝𝚢' 𝚐𝚘𝚛𝚖𝚊𝚗
big house
zeus(t1) - counselor
mentioned: jamie,
ophelia
╚xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx╝
he leaned forward, hooking his hands behind his back and turning his head so his cheek was within swinging distance. "go on. hit me. hit me. you win. do your worst. 'god hath given you one face', ophelia, here's another one for the road. hit me. lots of people want to!" his tone took an eerie sing-song chime. "there goes orin. you either love him or you hate him - but you probably hate him! but he doesn't mind. water off a duck's back for our orin. you can say whatever you want to him. he won't take it to heart. he won't. you can try and kill him in a forest clearing, you can cave his skull in, you can twist and spit whatever you want at him and he'll just take it. he doesn't care! why would he care?" wilder eyes, now, indifference and cold solitude becoming anger. "'cause if he did care, if he did, then he would rain down such hell upon you that you would have to be reassembled by air crash investigators. that's why he can't care. he's not allowed. so hit me. pull out one of your daggers and stab me in the throat, ophelia, i don't mind. do whatever you want. whatever'll make you happy. there's nothing left to do about it."
he had gotten rather sick of playing the idiot, the fool without a cause. it wasn't him - the part inside that had burned with joy for life that seemed so unrelenting had been snuffed, kicked to the curb as reality came crashing down. only a hollow copy was left - the same face, but different, duller eyes. sharper lines on his face.
