09-22-2016, 05:52 PM
Sören was adept at blending in. A shower and shave cleaned the dust from his bones, erasing the weary and ragged traveller. The suit he donned was a deep and luxurious royal blue atop a stark white shirt. It was all clean tailored lines and simplicity; crisp, and like most things about Sören, mostly inoffensive. Of course, the eye rather ruined the image. The skin around it was no longer an angry red, just its normal colour thanks to Morven's skills, but the eye within its socket filmed milky and blind. He could have worn the patch, but it was a threadbare thing that had seen him from India. If he was vain he would not have shown his face in public at all, but it did not go with the suit.
Business dug him out from his suite on one of the floors below. Someone else had formally imparted the tragic news of Declan's death to his family; Sören was not sure words admitting his own failure to protect could quite leave his lips, and certainly not with any sincerity. Declan had a daughter. A small one. He had a wife too, who would no doubt be devastated, and even the thought of women's tears shivered him with discomfort. The British Museum had credited Roopkund's find to Declan's name. A later expedition would be funded and carried out in his honour. Those were small things Sören did without thought; distant gestures that did not involve the awkwardness of weeping.
But Declan had a brother, and when he'd discovered that Dane was currently in the same city, he was not so cold as to ignore the fact. He had offered to meet and share condolences over a drink. They had been friends a long time, he and Dane's brother. It was the honourable thing to do. That, and admittedly, Sören was a bit curious.
Because Declan had always been reticent about his brother, and Sören knew little about the man; just a summation that the two had not seen eye to eye.
Originally he had suggested meeting in the hotel's ground floor bar, but had changed that plan when his senses had been tugged to the uppermost floor, where it seemed the doors were open. He'd taken up quiet residence by the bar, next to a woman plaintively gesturing for a server's attention. Sören was turned outward, keeping an eye on the shifting crowds, until a man in a cashmere sweater and disturbingly familiar features swept by.
"Dane Gregory, I take it."
Business dug him out from his suite on one of the floors below. Someone else had formally imparted the tragic news of Declan's death to his family; Sören was not sure words admitting his own failure to protect could quite leave his lips, and certainly not with any sincerity. Declan had a daughter. A small one. He had a wife too, who would no doubt be devastated, and even the thought of women's tears shivered him with discomfort. The British Museum had credited Roopkund's find to Declan's name. A later expedition would be funded and carried out in his honour. Those were small things Sören did without thought; distant gestures that did not involve the awkwardness of weeping.
But Declan had a brother, and when he'd discovered that Dane was currently in the same city, he was not so cold as to ignore the fact. He had offered to meet and share condolences over a drink. They had been friends a long time, he and Dane's brother. It was the honourable thing to do. That, and admittedly, Sören was a bit curious.
Because Declan had always been reticent about his brother, and Sören knew little about the man; just a summation that the two had not seen eye to eye.
Originally he had suggested meeting in the hotel's ground floor bar, but had changed that plan when his senses had been tugged to the uppermost floor, where it seemed the doors were open. He'd taken up quiet residence by the bar, next to a woman plaintively gesturing for a server's attention. Sören was turned outward, keeping an eye on the shifting crowds, until a man in a cashmere sweater and disturbingly familiar features swept by.
"Dane Gregory, I take it."
![[Image: odinraven.png]](http://thefirstage.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/odinraven.png)