Duck Lake kind of wishing that i never did saturday

I hope it’s cool that I started us something, @Klaus, I wanted to get it on her log! :)

Druid didn’t return to Rivenwood immediately. She found her way back to Duck Lake and took a seat beside its shore. She planned to give herself half an hour to reflect and process.

She felt silly doing it but she kept looking up from the water to peer around furtively, afraid that Glaukos might suddenly appear. He’d now become such a bogeyman in her mind. Druid resented how paranoiac she felt.

i was writing this offhandedly in docs i didn't see how long it seemed until i put it in preview LMAO

his peripatetic spirit always persisted; and thus to his own devices with no qualms.

@Reverie, who had found husband in the novel coywolf told him briefly of her overdue departure when they crossed paths. there was no love lost, and after keenly flitting his eye over @Dusty Rose for any aftertastes of subterfuge, he picked himself up, and would carry on.

the satyr had found unlikely refuge under her willows, but promptly picketed a fine line the ice until he was alone on an icedrift of self-making away at sea, as if he was the last ice merchant of chimborazo with a devotion to a lost tradition.

nothing had changed.

he glanced at the forest that was in the armpit of swiftcurrent creek without any longing.

he had not mastered his need for connection, just as hadn’t gotten over his insubstantial grudges that filtered out into unimpressive “top 15 reasons on why you should pity me” soliloquies scribbled on the back of some throw away documents, but those were long buried somewhere else in there.


he wasn’t some tortured soul whose eyes were still sticky with pre-birth; as hollow and underused as his muscles were. sardonic smiles, rather vaunting, dally over his head the hold they had over his youth.

he still missed his vater in a boyish way he did not like to admit. again.

he was never disciplined well, he was told, and he was a deeply disturbed child, it showed.

but he had chosen to physically move on. hoping the ceiling of his thoughts would be whitewashed with a vigilance, no traces of anything that lived there, coated with depressing neutral “monochrome zoo nursery” aesthetic off of pinterest.

so he would ignore, and keep ignoring, and ignore himself right into his (early) grave.

the clap of lakewater sounded at his ankles grew closer to druid at the lip of the lake.

he chased the injured duck in the shallows. the quarry of the day picked the lucky five-card hand today as well, as his habitual headaches were unceremoniously shotput through his head again.

suddenly the world turned into dishwater, wet and blurry, as he grunted faintly and sewed his eyes shut, hanging his head in a stilled, pained manner.

It was a beautiful post! I will match neither the quality nor the quantity, LOL. :)

Thanks to her heightened awareness, Druid spotted someone approaching long before he actually arrived at the lakeside. She took to her feet, wary and watchful, though she didn’t move. She refused to let her paranoia rule her. She wouldn’t flee from a stranger just because he dimly reminded her of Glaukos.

Anyway, he didn’t seem to be paying any attention to her. She watched as he gave chase to a duck in the shallows, impressed by his swiftness. He wasn’t quite fast enough, though. The bird winged out of reach and the man hung his head, as if ashamed of his failure.

Something about this sight stirred her curiosity. Druid ventured closer, clearing her throat to announce her encroaching presence.

as she clears her throat, his fight-or-flight(-or-haunt) nature takes it as a warning, reflexively he coils like a spring, though most likely pointing his nose in a slightly off-kilter direction.

klaus is confused to see the abstraction of two eyes peering at him at the fog relents. no, it was a pair.

a two colored pair?

he knew her! his eye flashes briefly before settling into a mediocre glint of recognition.

if he could, he would've awkwardly rubbed his throat, the thought she would've seen his existential sheddings unnerved him.

what's worse, the interaction he felt coming would feel a lot like having to explain not making good on his promises to make due on spring break plans he'd made in a chowder-headed weekday mindset.

he hadn't felt the need to say goodbye. he even then, he tongues over name gingerly.

"...bracelet?"

His jumpy reaction brought her to a halt. Druid sipped in a breath, watching him as he turned a confused squint on her. Was something wrong with him? Her ears splayed as she stood there uncertainly, eyes careful as they roved his face, noting a sudden transformation before he finally spoke.

Druid blinked, then stared. She hadn’t heard that name spoken in quite some time, particularly in another’s voice. But she didn’t think of the snake beyond an abstract pang for her old friend. Instead, she wondered how this man knew it. Why had he said it?

I’m sorry, do I know you? she said eventually, her own expression revealing that she didn’t recognize him whatsoever.

she impresses upon him she is not shrink away from his dysphonia. the lightness in his head cautions a preordained ache.

he didn’t have to be sentimental.

he didn’t have to realize anything.

in truth she didn’t know him, how could she? he swaggered backwards awkwardly in the water, still facing her. the lethargy in his bones was permeable, his skin rankled with gooseflesh and blacker than ever, and was damned beyond effability.

he barely knew himself, he had shed his tail and eaten it too many times to count.

astraeus made his pitiful condition palpable, and was too willing and wet behind the ears.

klaus is a bitten fish in the lake, and is lean and alert.

masterful, yet unadulterated, damascus steel.

it wasn’t a mask if he wore it right.

“nein,” a germanic clue nonetheless.

where was his duck? he thinks with a new brandished annoyance, before the clashing of kartels that produced the finest sounds, and hot, white flashes in his temple elected a stronger, pained groan that forced him to sit his midriff in the water.

…. more like a heat-seeking missile to his temple.

“Nein,” he said in a familiar accent that made Druid’s left eye twitch.

Do you know Mahler, then? Druid asked, noting the man’s continued discomfiture but unable to persist in identifying him. Were you part of Rivenwood a few years ago? You must’ve been, if you remember Bracelet…

Even as she questioned him, she continued plumbing her own memories. She caught a faint whiff of rain, the distant grumble of thunder, and she grasped at them. Yet nothing more came to Druid, so she looked to the stranger, waiting for him to fill in the blanks.

his vater's name as spoken word startled him.

in the endless expanse of commentary that played solitaire in the vestiges of his mind, its the card that was always in his hand but played the least. he, who was not allowed to acknowledge his children as his siblings. he, who had been failed and forgotten but forgave with need of paternal connection. he, who ran away when the puzzle piece was too blunted to place.

he turns his head away now, and while he was cursed to always reply in silence, it was a case where it was the only eloquent answer.

He made no reply at all. Druid squinted at him, curious despite herself. Her lips parted as if she was about to ask another question when she pressed them together again. She didn’t have time to rehash the past with a man she hardly recognized.

If you change your mind and want to talk, you can find me at Rivenwood, Druid told him.

She needed to get home and began preparing to depart, though she moved slowly in case this stranger—who knew Bracelet’s name and used Mahler’s accent—found his voice again.

we can end here if you like! tysm for this he'll be visiting soon <33

unfortunately for them both, or maybe fortunate for the delicate ears of children and old women and the like, his chalkboard-etch voice diminished like a flame with no wind to feed it.

would vater be there?

would he care to see him? after waxing poetic about how he cared for their closeness, but had left again because he similarly couldn't withstand the connotations of his follies?

would he have more children who he would envy—for they could not question the pseudoscience behind his paternity?

he let the buzz of the insects in his head go on. klaus seemed to flap in the faint breeze.

he wouldn't speak.