09-08-2024, 04:33 PM
[[Continued from In Absentia]]
For weeks he’d kept his life together, constructing an artifice of routine and going through the motions like each one was nothing more than a touchstone to mark the normal passing of time. The twins and Sterling. Sage and Paragon and Kallisti and the girls. Nox’s texts. But the distance crept in, inch by inch, and when he looked down on his life, he recognised nothing in it. By the time of the excruciating Vasiliev ball he was finding it difficult to relate to any of the things he knew he ought to care about, and Kristian’s words set up a haunt in his mind that ran its doubts over everything that remained.
He gave Lily to Sterling for safekeeping. Told Carmen he needed some time away from work; assured her there was no reason to worry. There was no plan, just an emptiness that he could no longer bear to pretend away for the sake of others. He smiled when he left.
His last clear memory was of the Carnival, resplendent with Halloween revelry. Shadows and ghouls, darkness beckoning, a bacchanal promise.
Raffe walked into the Veil’s Embrace. He didn’t remember coming out.
He didn’t know who found him, or how. Frost crunched the ground now, the season succumbing to the skeletal clutch of winter’s icy caress. Weeks more had passed. Life quietened and died around him; Raffe wasn’t in the city anymore, but madness chased memories, and he only knew it because he was later told. Hollows carved his cheeks to diamond peeks and made solitary monuments of each rib. Track marks and bruises decorated his arms and legs; failed attempts at capturing meaning, addictions he’d always denied himself. He had vague recollection of a honey-coated tongue, but the words whispered away on the wind; he didn’t want to be saved. And then, as though no time had passed at all, he remembered the sterile walls of Paragon.
He let himself hibernate through the parade of scientists, eyes often closed even when he wasn’t asleep. White coats that coaxed him to talk, insisted he eat. He never even noticed when the scenery changed once more.
For weeks he’d kept his life together, constructing an artifice of routine and going through the motions like each one was nothing more than a touchstone to mark the normal passing of time. The twins and Sterling. Sage and Paragon and Kallisti and the girls. Nox’s texts. But the distance crept in, inch by inch, and when he looked down on his life, he recognised nothing in it. By the time of the excruciating Vasiliev ball he was finding it difficult to relate to any of the things he knew he ought to care about, and Kristian’s words set up a haunt in his mind that ran its doubts over everything that remained.
He gave Lily to Sterling for safekeeping. Told Carmen he needed some time away from work; assured her there was no reason to worry. There was no plan, just an emptiness that he could no longer bear to pretend away for the sake of others. He smiled when he left.
His last clear memory was of the Carnival, resplendent with Halloween revelry. Shadows and ghouls, darkness beckoning, a bacchanal promise.
Raffe walked into the Veil’s Embrace. He didn’t remember coming out.
He didn’t know who found him, or how. Frost crunched the ground now, the season succumbing to the skeletal clutch of winter’s icy caress. Weeks more had passed. Life quietened and died around him; Raffe wasn’t in the city anymore, but madness chased memories, and he only knew it because he was later told. Hollows carved his cheeks to diamond peeks and made solitary monuments of each rib. Track marks and bruises decorated his arms and legs; failed attempts at capturing meaning, addictions he’d always denied himself. He had vague recollection of a honey-coated tongue, but the words whispered away on the wind; he didn’t want to be saved. And then, as though no time had passed at all, he remembered the sterile walls of Paragon.
He let himself hibernate through the parade of scientists, eyes often closed even when he wasn’t asleep. White coats that coaxed him to talk, insisted he eat. He never even noticed when the scenery changed once more.
![[Image: Raffe-banner--scaled.jpg]](http://thefirstage.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Raffe-banner--scaled.jpg)