no obligation & whenever! <3
when he returned from duskfire, mahler climbed the sunset shadow-weaving of the high stone path, seeking
@Astraeus.
the young prince of stars.
pausing to watch a pair of blackbirds winging against the faded sky, mahler trudged on, into the lope that had somehow remained smooth these long years.
what had the reticent boy become? he hoped to know, and was guilty not to already have this knowledge.
sauntering to the graf’s side, the eventide prince was queried of his ventures. inwardly, his heart wrinkled as if a vinyl dollhead; pruney and creased after it had mistaken its place on his sleeve. that childhood naivety allowed the artless turn-of-mind and the half-written manifestos of their enherit destiny to justify, to be realized.
it had turned out the blackest parts of him like the corners of a plastic bag, thermoplastic resin and all. so could he swear to mahler, that he was a “good” man? no, there were very few things he had gathered close and his father was the brick and beams of this proverbial house.
resigned, “when tiny cold stars had littered the ground — winter — to find food it wasn’t a bad idea to follow scavenger birds. sometimes they don’t mind sharing a meal. there are many kinds of terrain too, i remember reuniting with wintersbane and once and him telling me of a bay where he planned to settle, i never did visit … but i suppose he has a glacier now.” it being common knowledge duskfire was an allied state, he’d heard of the tundrian’s success. regrettably, there was more ( even though he was probably asked to share one thing ).
“i met a scared boy who was younger than me, who i thought could save from two strangers he did not know, but i was not as strong as i thought. one of them even healed wounds when unconscious, but knowing i went on thanks to their pity fills me with no gratitude.”
a boy, yes that's what he was. his first twelvemonth, a protracted footrace versus whatever sadistic fates out there. once he was a devil-may-cry type of child, but he was reduced to fissured damascus steel. thankfully, he could still quirk his lips at the way his father rolled his w’s & his sentences forever decorated by rejoinders. the silently nodded at mahler’s reflections, he trusted whatever weight they held, but he was at a lost at what pity has made of him. “and what of the things you saw? i still doubt i have as much wisdom as you,” he smiles.
and there had been a time where he wanted to learn about everything, to why slugs left slime trails to why some trees would undress themselves during winter. perhaps that need was still nestled somewhere in him, like a hunger pang. he was not lost on the way mahler appraised the blight on his profile. "mach dir keine sorgen um diese dinge. ich werde lernen, was immer du mir anbieten wirst, um es mir beizubringen."
astraeus is thankful for the lax but candid air between them, being able to substitute his father's dialect versus common and still be understood. "wir können über alles reden, was sie wollen." he almost had half the mind to ask what his mother like, after guessing and barely knowing from his memory in the womb, but he was practicing on keeping his conversations light.
"landwirtschaft," he repeats with an inquisitorial hum. consciously turning to meet mahler's trajectory, he meekly shakes his head. something their kind did not do but was vital, it hung on his thoughts like a cryptic riddle.
astraeus nods along to the graf’s words, welling with deep interest. sowing life into the grange that hinds and bucks would return to, led by inherent aptitude in their stomachs — much like the boy and his heart.
suddenly, it comes to him like realizing the slurry of upset food down your chin, “wait, i remember this. in sagtannet, i would find weeds and put them in the ground again. i showed star’s daughter.” he looks up from tousling the topsoil between his toes. where had they flit to anyways? “now i know what it is called.”
“maybe i was always a cultivator,” he jokes with the aftertaste of chagrin, half-proud he was experienced in something in his youth that was not true to others.