havensen:
Quirrel could shiver in times like these. Times were hard, and getting harder all the time, but that wasn’t what left his limbs shaking. ― it was merely the feeling of the kingdom. Hollownest, never in all its time, had been a comfortable place. there was always something sick and sweet in the air like the grounds of a hospital where no one under its care ever lived to leave it. there was always something wrong with it, even without that honeysuckle light seeping from its pores. ― but here, this was a different kind of sick. this was the silence of a grave where sparrow nor specter breathed, just cold and dark, and maybe that was something of a haven. maybe Quirrel really was the outsider looking in, even if his intuition and nerve-network of memories guided him like a second sense, but he couldn’t help but feel it chilled, clawing at his heart. ( he doesn’t realize it, but he curls in on himself, just a little. / the barely-there brace for a freeze that is not coming. )
a hand waved in gesture, brushing the notion of being lost off like how one brushes snow laying atop ice, but his upbeat demeanor hitches on familiarity like flesh on thorns.
“ I’m not seeking directions, i assure… “ his voice falters near the end, thoughtfulness tinging it a greyed color of blue. had he been? he felt like he had been- specific moments with no network to their name explaining them stands out amongst the mind, but nothing to connect them, nothing to point at the land and proclaim ‘ yes, here. here i have been, here i am again. ‘ only the feeling that he had been.
“ I’ll be first to admit, my memory is far from what it was. this place is familiar- very familiar, hazard i to say i could trace these grounds with my eyes closed and emerge only with a handful of gashes to my name if so begged to, but… the memory itself of a prior visit, if its there at all, is not one that comes to me. “
a pause, a breath. he can feel the cold stale air in his throat.
“ you’re… quite familiar to me as well, if it helps ― or hinders any. “
Hinders? No, no, the implication he had seen them before didn’t hinder- it actually helped quite a lot. Perhaps what had thrown the vessel off so much was their perspective? Or maybe it was actually understanding the words and sentences knitted together by Quirrel’s voice. Really.. They had more just seen him than ever met him, despite foggy memories of approaching the pillbug in the past. Does it count as a meeting if you can’t really process the encounter? A breathless, wheezy sort of chuckle escaped them as the pieces began to click- of course, they may seem familiar, but it was silly of them to expect him to remember who they were. Never was there an introduction, and.. Well.
It was an understatement to say they had changed over the years. Last Quirrel would’ve seen them, they’d have maybe stood up to his waist- and that was being... Optimistic, about their diminutive height as a child. (The further back they went, the hazier their memories- but all things considered, they probably were no bigger than when they had hatched. Their kind was a bit odd that way, with delayed growth and sudden molts; though being undead, one couldn’t ever expect them to be normal.)
“Thinking about it.. I would not blame your memory... It’s a bit hard to recognize one you likely last saw as a small child after they’ve had years to grow.”
Perhaps, it’d be a bit easier if they didn’t loom over their fellow traveler so much. They could hardly tell if it was the cold wind that swirled through the town, or if they were accidentally more intimidating than they meant to be- but they certainly caught the other slightly curling in on himself. Seeker lowered themself to one knee, not quite putting themself at even level- but much closer, at least.
“I didn’t even have a name to know, at the time... But, that too has changed. You may call me Seeker.” Ah, for once they didn’t actually forget to introduce themself- with how little names had mattered in their native tongue, they tended to miss that quite a lot.
