cozen: (025)
Bastien ([personal profile] cozen) wrote 2020-09-14 02:29 pm (UTC)

“Well, I am happy to help,” Bastien says.

Which isn’t really untrue. Being helpful is a pastime. But happy might be overstating things a little, at the moment, given that maintaining his good face is already taking more effort than usual, and he feels like he’s carrying this conversation on his back through a swamp full of traumatic sinkholes, and he still isn’t sure Colin doesn’t want something.

But that’s why they left his room. They’re walking past a few fish stalls, now, and one of the vendors has a large conch set next to the fish. Bastien stops in his tracks and secures permission to pick it up with a look and a gesture. He rubs the pearly interior and then holds it to his ear for a moment, listening to the resonance—the sea, they say.

It’s not meant as a permanent interruption or subject change. It just cheers him up, a sustaining little bit.

He holds it out to Colin in case he’d like a try.

“That was during the Blight, wasn’t it? You must not have been very old.”

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