Slaid Kul is six, and the noble is very, very tall.
He crouches in front of him, though, and Slaid smiles nervously into the man's eyes, because no one ever lowers themselves to his level when they speak to him.
"My name is Orestes," the noble says. He says nothing of the gaping abyss between his status and Slaid's.
Slaid is six, and he doesn't understand social power, or why the tattoo on Orestes' face frightens his mother so. He's never seen a tattoo before, and doesn't realize they're not meant to move.
Slaid is eleven, and very cold.
The day is dark, sky thick with clouds pregnant with rain, and the wind oozes through skeleton trees. He shivers as it slides like eels across his skin.
"Bundle up," his mother had advised. "You'll catch a chill."
It hadn't seemed that cold at first, so he'd ignored his mother's advice and gone out without a coat, instead a simple, heavy jerkin and tunic. He hunches over himself as he walks, arms wrapped tightly against his chest, and he grits his teeth to keep them from chattering. Week-old snow crunches beneath his boots, and he's just thankful the walk to the village isn't overly long.
The sound of horse hooves beating a fast pace against the packed dirt road makes him look up, and he stares as a noble races past. He catches a brief glimpse of dark features against pale skin, an aristocratic nose and a strange tattoo that seems to move across his skin at the corner of the noble's eye.
This time, when he shivers, it's not because of the cold, but he smiles, because he's known Orestes for as long as he can remember.
Slaid is sixteen, and he is deeply in love.
Myrna is fifteen, though, and he's not allowed to see her without her mother there as well. It grits along his nerves, but he accepts it because he loves her.
Orestes smiles when he tells him of her.
Slaid is sixteen, and doesn't recognize the sadness in Orestes' eyes.
Slaid is twenty-four, now, husband to the woman he loves and father of three.
His children are his world, and he toils long and hard in the fields for them. Myrna -- beautiful, glorious Myrna -- works alongside him, sleeves rolled up to her elbows and skirt bunched around her thighs despite the cold. There is a streak of dirt across her cheek, and he loves her for it.
He hears noise behind him and sees the shadow of a man on horseback fall across the wheat. He turns, and high up on the road is Orestes, dark and powerful and glorious in a way Myrna can never be.
Slaid smiles and waves, and feels Myrna go still beside him. When he looks at her in confusion, she says nothing, just raises the scythe.
Slaid is thirty-seven, and feeling old.
His oldest is seventeen and already married, and he's expecting a grandchild in the coming months. He prays the child is born in the summer, when it's warm, and not in the cold dark of winter, when the sun rises mere hours before noon and sinks below the horizon not long after. The days are long, in the summer, and he wants his grandchild to see that first.
Myrna is growing delicate with age and hard work, wrists fragile in his hands and skin growing pale and thin. Such is the life of living so far north, he supposes.
He has to go into the village, now, to see Orestes. Myrna won't allow him in the house, and Slaid doesn't understand why.
Slaid is forty-nine, and Myrna died a year ago, fragile and old as one can wish to be in this place.
He lives on his own, now, with an old, graying sheep dog, and the walk to the village aches in his bones, but any attempt to mount a horse leaves him in such agony he can barely move.
Orestes visits him often, cool and dark and soothing. Slaid's skin is papery beneath his hands as he presses it to his brow, but Orestes' is strong and smooth.
Slaid smiles, and sees pain in Orestes' eyes.
Slaid is fifty-four, and dying.
He's seen his children more often the past week than he has in the last three years, and it is a solid, heavy ache in his chest.
Orestes visits almost daily now, and Slaid can see his children have some misgivings about him, but they say nothing and he is thankful. He notices Orestes is careful to visit when his children are away, and Slaid wonders why the people he loves most cannot love each other.
"Try not to worry so much," Orestes says, seated on a heavy wooden stool Slaid made years ago. If it weren't for his bearing and clothes, Orestes would never look like a noble: He sits with his legs spread wide, a foot hooked around a stool leg, leaning forward and resting against his knees.
Slaid likes to watch the tattoo swirl against his skin. It's a way of distracting himself from Orestes' eyes, how bruised they look against his skin, like old wounds. He can't imagine why Orestes would be in so much pain.
Slaid is fifty-five, and he knows he'll be dead within a week. Breath comes difficultly to his lungs, now, hard and cold. His tongue is thick and heavy in his mouth, and it pains him to swallow.
Orestes spends more time with him than his children do; slowly, they've stopped visiting, as though trying to put their dying father from their mind. He can't honestly blame them; he can only imagine how he must look.
Orestes, though, is with him for most of the day, before and after dark.
Slaid wakes to find Orestes by his bed, watching him with sorrow in his eyes. He tries to smile, but if his lips move at all it turns his face into a grimace, something gruesome.
A strong, pale hand brushes the hair out of his eyes, and Orestes leans forward, presses a kiss to the parchment-skin of his forehead. "I love you, my old friend," he murmurs, and leans back.
Slaid realizes, suddenly, that Orestes has not aged a day since he was six.
He swallows, almost chokes on it, and closes his eyes.
The day is dark, but it's never really been anything different, here. Orestes shivers in the cold, watching the breeze kick up dead, rotting leaves, and pulls his coat tighter around him.
Head down and hands tucked into his pockets, he turns and walks away.
He has no place here, now.
Slaid is eight, ninety-three, forty-seven, twenty-five, one thousand, all at once. He is strong as he has not been in ten, fifty, one hundred years, and the wood of the plow is solid in his hands.
He smiles as he raises the scythe, laughs as he tills good earth. The weather is always warm, here, the sky blue, the sun high in the sky, and the grass greener than anything he can remember. Sweat glistens sleek on his skin.
Sometimes, Orestes visits him, and when Slaid looks deeply enough into his eyes he sees a map of the world on his face. He doesn't understand the sorrow he finds there.
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strzyga