❛You didn’t have a choice. You think you do, when you look back on it. But in a moment? When things are really out of control? You don’t have any choice.❜ [nija for qir]
Qir said nothing for a long, long moment. His gaze travelled to the far horizon, and then travelled back to the sight of Eiri’s hands on the reigns before him. It was a sure and certain grip, and her arms around him made him feel safer than he’d felt since his father’s last, faltering warning.
Strange how before he’d cried at such insignificant things. At Ami dropping his doll into the Ióvhainn and watching the straw soften and float away. At the stern words of Beras the miner after he’d been caught sneaking into the processing site. He’d only gone to marvel at the shiny rocks they pulled from the earth - from huge lumps of rock and dirt so insignificant in appearance he had wondered how they’d known they were worth anything at all. At his father sending him to bed too early.In the face of this, shouldn’t he be crying? Mythelean grew into a memory as they travelled farther south, and his father remained trapped with it. All he felt was a lead weight in his heart, a weariness in his veins, and an urge to press his forehead down to the mane of this horse and stay there until the world was right again. His mind was too quiet.
“Pure knowledge is empty.” Came the words finally, in a small and distant voice. “So many new things have taken root that were never learned. I know so many things, but…” Qir began to worry the edges of his cloak with his fingernails. “I don’t know if it’s going to be okay. And I don’t know if I can save him. I don’t want to look there yet.”
He turned to Nija and fixed her with an old, blank stare. Somehow, seeing her already looking at him was comforting.
“The moment is our only honesty. Ours, or the circumstances’ that dictate our actions. I understand that it can’t be controlled like a memory, or shaped like the future.” He let out a shaky sigh, and felt at last a burning behind his eyes, in his throat. “But… but I can see a future where he’s riding with us and the only thing to shatter was a vase on the wall. It was so close to happening, Nija. And I can’t turn it back like I did at the party.”