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Blistered thumbs stroked roughly against his cheek, the pads of the fingers were calloused by years of gripping onto a pen. He was convinced underneath their nails were permanently stained by the ink. The dragging of skin, gentle clips of nails into flesh, was familiar and comforting in a way.
It had been a decade, possibly more, since they had left. Hand grasping hand, looking for a sense of weight and anchorage in a perpetual storm of fear and anger. Tartah couldn’t remember a night in all that time where he hadn’t pulled himself into Custas’s bed, grabbing onto his shirt in a fervent search for security. Every time, he never doubted the receival a comforting stroking against his cheek in return.
Some nights it wasn’t quite enough, and he found himself lying with his eyes closed till the sun rose. Always painfully awake, aware of every little sound. Other nights it worked like a charm, minutes of a calm and gentle pattern and warmth lulling him deep into sleep. It was a toss up, a coin flip.
Tartah cracked open an eye slightly, his breathing slowing as he calmed. Custas was resting beside him, lashes fluttering gently against his cheeks, casting a shadow onto the skin. His hair was splayed out around him, most of it falling on the pillow behind and underneath him, but some of it curling around his face like a silver picture frame. The moon cast a glow around him, illuminating his silhouette like a gentle cage of glimmery grey.
Tartah hated how that was all he could see. Coco had described it to him before, the rich brown eyes and the color of his cheeks when he laughed too hard. The purples and reds of his clothes, the gold of his jewelry. There was so much to appreciate, to love and admire. And all he could see was silver. The same silver he saw everywhere coating the walls and floors, the furniture and fabrics, the people around him. A near indiscernible wash of the sickening colour.
There was no quick fix solution, no legs of wood with no silverwood tree to root itself in him and fix his problems.
He understood the anger, the pain from being in a world designed to be unequal and favor people who didn’t suffer. He could never fault Custas for the decision he made, especially not when he took ahold of the same warm hand caressing his cheek, and walked with him. Away from his grandfather, his friends, his life.
Because at least he had that. Custas had nothing.
He felt a sickening guilt, the kind that rooted itself in ones guts and never left. Every fresh reminder sowing the seeds of hurt and remorse that you could never quite get rid of.
He had remembered the moment Custas found out. Not long after they had left, Coco stumbling after them with sniffles and shaking shoulders.
A week or so after, he recalled, she had mentioned it in passing. Wondering something, or maybe trying to find a solution- not that any of her ideas had come up anything but naught.
Custas’s face had changed, not in guilt or pity, but in recognition. A silent spark in his eyes, a moment of relation- and of hope for a friend who might understand him.
And then, seconds later, a moment of regret for his actions, a small sorry escaping his lips. It was inconsequential to remember, a moment lost to time and the experiences they had since, but one he found himself remembering fondly regardless.
He had known nobody like him, nobody who suffered from limitations that were far too ridiculous to stop the casting of magic. But ones that did anyway. At least, by the strict regiment of the knights moralis.
Tartah shut his eyes again, breathing out through his nose and tucking himself into Custas. Head resting against his shoulder, and arm resting over his torso. Custas shuffled, adjusting himself to reach his cheek again and grunting softly as he did. The steady breathing, the movement of his chest was grounding and calming, no matter where they were. Whether it was a cave, late at night as they travelled from A to B, or their plush bed with quilted covers from scraps of their old clothes.
Sometimes Tartah was worried about the silverwood that had taken root in Custas, fretting whether the comforting warmth would beckon it to grow. But he also knew the deep, racking guilt Custas dragged with him, his father dead for his sake and the fact he had hurt people weighed on his soul heavier than non-communicated love could ever hope to even out.
He felt it too, the fact he would never see his family again. His grandfather had passed a few years prior, now all he could visit was a grave. Someone, he wasn’t sure who, would leave a small bouquet of pink flowers propped against the stone every few weeks, and kept the area clean. The reminder that even after he had died, the abandonment left someone else to care for him more than Tartah could, struck a guilty pang in his chest. It was the kind of neverending ache that wrapped itself around one's heart and squeezed till they were coughing blood.
But, for a few more quiet hours, Tartah didn’t need to feel the pressure of right and wrong. The bottomless pit of the moral conundrum, never knowing if his decision was the one he should have made. He just needed to know the feeling of cotton and warm skin against his own, the sound of feather-light breaths and the smell of Custas surrounding him.