Stavanger Bay she brought the sugar and the mint

Szymon was a creature who lived almost exclusively in the present. Recalling details from his past, though habitual and unavoidable, was a fleeting and businesslike thing — he did not relive the events that had caused many of his lingering neuroses and did not feel the disorientation that Doe sometimes did. The details, for Szymon, were concrete and indelible — not dynamic and transient. Too, looking too far into the future was folly for the browbeaten Cairn boy; it was something Skellige could afford to do, and something that Skellige was required to do as an aspiring Leviathan. But Szymon…it had been drummed into him from a very young age that he was a peon — undeniably useful but essentially expendable. He fought for his life because despite his avoidant nature, he possessed a fiery will to survive — perhaps for no other reason than to prove the others wrong.

Without Szymon’s realizing it, Doe had become another reason — a greater one. It was not a conscious decision, and he would likely not realize the place she had sequestered in his heart until his life was indeed threatened in some way — but it dashed a latent splash of kerosene on the flicker of tenacity that burned steadily within his soul. She would, in time, teach him how to regard time in a different way — she would color his past and illuminate his future in a way he was, as yet, helpless to comprehend.

“Mmm,” he murmured his agreement, his scarred muzzle canting in an acquiescent nod as a smile settled upon his kohl-lined lips. The Cairn boy followed his Witch Doctor to the outskirts of the bay, regarding the fruit trees with a keen eye. He breathed deeply of the scent, recalling her description and striving to match the real thing to her words: “We will know the right ones by the sharp, sick smell they give off.” A grimace crossed his features as the sour, uniquely fermented scent rooted itself in his sentience, sneezing his distaste of it — but he willingly moved forward, readily bending his head to fill his mouth with the plums to carry them back to the agreed upon meeting spot. Licking his lips, another moue shaped his pallid features at the sticky juice, but he wasted no time in taking another two trips as he’d been instructed.