Welcome to Gaia! ::

I have not given it much thought since he left.

Zekiel felt a strange pinch in his chest, more reactive than physical and generally unusual for him: as though someone were carefully gathering all the feelings and breath behind his ribcage into their palm and then slowly closing their fist, compressing them into a single contained knot. It happened sometimes when he thought of the boy from the far shore, though, so it wasn’t entirely unfamiliar. He hadn’t spoken of Ottolo to anyone but Marleya since his departure, and then, only because she had ended up spending nearly as much time with him — as he learned to use trident and build up the strength — as Tacrith had spent when he’d been first recovering and striving to walk.

“I think…that you are right,” he said, his smile small, but there. “I should think of him less often also.” He raised his spoon. Still, it didn’t make it to his mouth, only higher than it had been before. “And I do pray that he has found happiness and lives it every day. I only fear that if I do not think of him, I might forget. Do you think it is selfish to…?” But of course it was selfish, he knew before asking his own question—to want more than he’d been given, or even only to want answers instead of being content with blind trust. Ottolo was gone, his fate in the gods’ hands (whether his own or Zekiel’s mattered little), and Zekiel ought to have been wholly content with his faith in the gods’ choices on the other boy’s behalf, whether or not he ever knew what they were. He breathed out, giving a small shake of his head and flushing at his own silliness. “I apologize.”

He blew on his soup, though it was no longer hot enough to make that necessary, and ate.

“Mm, have you had visitors in your home before?” he asked once his mouth was clear.

Zekiel flushed hotter when Tacrith spoke, abashed that it was apparently that obvious what was on his mind even if he didn’t say it in quite so many words aloud—that all his wants were clear for all to see even if they were misplaced. He breathed out. “I was blessed by the time with him that the gods gave me already,” he said. “And it is clear to me now that that time is all the time we were to have, and I should think on it and be happy and grateful, because it was good. To think on it and feel anything but happiness, or to want…more…is selfish of me. I should have more faith.”

The latter topic, at least, was simpler to manage, and his smile broadened a fraction. “The Sanctum receives many visitors, yes,” he said. “Every day. Most are not to seek me personally. Or, they did not used to be.” He tipped his head, expression warming more at the thought. “Actually, now that I have spent more time in the city through my service, and have come to know many people, there are number of those who do asking for me. And that is always especially wondrous. I invite everyone, I think, to come to see the Sanctum, but I do love to see them also myself. Itasza—she is a potter, you know, and uses some of the dyes from the deep jungles that Matchitemin brings to color her work—she visits very often. Now that her daughter is healing I think she may also visit with her…”

For more time than he realized, Zekiel tittered off the names of persons from about Pajore who had come to visit him, who they were, and how they had come to meet. All of it seemed relevant to him, and good for Tacrith to know; perhaps he even knew some of the people himself from having tended them.

“Oh, and Malta has come just recently!” he added at the tail of it. “She was very excited. Have I told you of Malta?”

“Oh! Then you must know Malta is wondrous. She…” Zekiel trailed off on a thought, and then laughed. “She is the one who found me when I first became lost as I told you about. I was walking and she came running into me as though she had somewhere very important to be very immediately and I was in the exact spot of road she needed to go through…but after she became excited and apologetic about it. She had only her bird with her then, but she has many beasts as I later learned. Great and small ones. She even has some from the far shore—her mistress collects them and Malta tends to them. Like you do with people.”

Zekiel glanced to Tacrith, thoughtful before abruptly beaming. “I think you must meet her,” he said. “She is easy to startle, but wonderful to talk to and knows more about beasts than I think I ever could learn if I tried. They like her, too—the animals. When I returned to her village later, to give ceremony at their local church, I visited with her and she showed me some of them. It was just recently that she came to Pajore and had opportunity to see me here.”

There wasn’t much left of Zekiel’s meal by then, but he enjoyed it until the end, humming with pleasure when he finished and looking to Tacrith’s bowl as he stood—intending to wash at the very least his own. “If you’ve finished and tell me how you’d like it done, I can tend to yours also.”

“She is,” Zekiel agreed. He watched as Tacrith stood, bracing a hand on the table to help balance himself. “I do not have to,” he said, “but it would please me to help. It’s an easier task for me than you.”

Taking Tacrith’s bowl carefully — since he did seem to be finished though he hadn’t said so directly — and then moving with his and Tacrith’s to what had appeared to be the kitchen area to set them in the wash basin. He glanced back, though, at Tacrith’s latter commentary.

“I may return now, if you would prefer. I have no obligations to anyone but you this evening, so my time is yours until we bid goodnight.” Despite saying he would leave if Tacrith bid him, which he would, Ze unbuttoned the bottom cuffs of his sleeves to fold them back and up to near his elbow, to avoid staining them with soap or food before turning on a small amount of water to wet the dishes. Until Tacrith did bid him out or clarify, he saw no immediate need to depart.

Zekiel glanced, watching as Tacrith seemed to retire the idea of sending him on his way immediately and instead poured himself water and settled by the fire. Satisfied that he didn’t need to concern himself with departing quite yet and pleased that Tacrith was taking the advice to rest himself, Zekiel hummed and began to wash their dishes. It started almost tuneless, an airy and random string of haphazard notes as he scrubbed up a lather, but became quiet singing beneath his breath as he went along.

It couldn’t have been a very beautiful or even perfectly accurate rendition of the morning hymn, but it was unobtrusive in its volume and to Zekiel — though he hadn’t put any thought into it one way or the other — it added life to the otherwise quiet space. He stopped the tune abruptly, though, in the midst of rinsing, on a thought.

“How long have you lived alone?” he asked. “I should think that with as many as know you through your work, you must have friends to visit with you often, to make it less quiet.”

Zekiel listened, finishing the rinse and then pulling their dishes aside to dry each in turn. There being just the two of them that had eaten, it wasn’t a trying process. As he set them aside stacked, however, and folded the towel back where it had been, his attention was on Tacrith.

“Four years is quite a good while to be living alone,” he said, approaching and sitting by the window as previously suggested. “And knowledge is wondrous, I am sure you are very good at studying…but company is good for the spirit.” He tipped his head, considerate. “Since you enjoy it so, though, perhaps some time I should do it with you. Then, you may study and have the company, and can do what pleases you without needing to be alone. Or…” He paused on a thought, “…perhaps with one of your friends from the clinic. I suspect they are better at studying than I…I do try. It pleases the gods to be studious, but even when I do I become distracted.”

What had he been talking about?

Oh, yes, Tacrith’s friends. He had said he’d also kept some to himself in his time there, but it had been so long — and he still had continued contact now — that Zekiel knew surely he must have many friends, perhaps just quieter ones.

“Should I make less noise in your company?” he asked abruptly at the thought—not wounded, simply curious since it did seem Tacrith was suggesting he preferred more hushed activities over boisterous company. Not that he thought himself especially loud, but perspective was everything and he knew Tacrith’s was very different from his own.

Zekiel tipped his head. “Even if they are not you must have some. Who are your friends? We could have all of them over supper one evening, I would like to meet them.” It was actually odd, now that he thought on it, that he hadn’t been introduced or seen anyone yet that Tacrith truly seemed to associate with on that level. Just the same, Tacrith was too kind of a man not to have developed some personal associations with his fellows he was sure.

He was pulled from that line of thought by Tacrith’s question. “Oh, are there other ways to study than books?” he asked. “In the Sanctum, it is how we were taught, though I do find my eyes wander on a page sooner than I would like and become lost. But which ways might we besides them?”

Zekiel blinked.

All those that I consider friends…are already here this evening.

He knew—or was all but certain—that he was the only company, but still Zekiel glanced about, because that did not follow. Tacrith was a good man and a pleasure to be around, who healed many people and met many people through it. Surely he had friends. Plural.

But, neither was he a liar, and Zekiel certainly didn’t see anyone else in attendance, so he glanced back to the doctor with a puzzled curiosity. Perhaps Tacrith was kind, but inexperienced at the process of actually drawing people into friendship beyond his clinic? At a thought, Zekiel beamed. “I could introduce you to my friends,” he said. “And then you would have many—there is Fallon, and Jalase, and Malta, and Edeline, and Matchitemin, and Marleya, and-”

Is it truly so bad to have only one close relationship?

Zekiel took pause on the thought and considered, before continuing. “I do not think it is bad at all. One relationship can be wondrous for more reasons than could be counted, but sometimes, it seems you have much space and not so many to fill it with when there are many who would be happy to have your company.”

At the latter description of a ‘lesson’ type, however, his attention perked immediately. “Oh? Are there those sort?” he asked. “None of our tutors at the Sanctum do so…except with rituals, though most still learn from the book, it was easier for Sister Mortrem to show me how and then to help me do it so that I might remember.” Text was easy to get lost in, so far as Zekiel was concerned, and it was a wonder to him that some could concentrate on it as long as they could. Even when he wanted to and tried sincerely, his mind seemed to divert course of its own accord. He couldn’t remember a time when it hadn’t. “I’ve also learned to knot netting and cook that way, from Marleya. Though…” He pinked a bit, sheepish, “…these are not lessons I’m told much befit my path.”

But he enjoyed them, from time to time, so there didn’t seem much harm in that, so long as he got everything else he needed to do done.