(Untitled)

[takiena_called]

Mornings are hard. Finn can't handle being alone in the mornings (it's easier later in the day, but in the mornings--when he's just woken up from dreams that leave him in tears--it is impossible). So no matter when he wakes up--and this morning it was very early, before the light had started streaming through his window--he stays under his covers

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[pwyll_twiceborn]

Last time Paul spoke to Finn dan Shahar, he ended up with a broken nose.

He has tape stuck over it now, holding it back into shape. It looks slightly undignified, which means that it's less than the optimum conditions under which to talk to Finn -

- but from the way he looks and sounds, right now, optimum conditions aren't so much of a concern.

Paul knows enough to know that Finn in this state, mishandled, could very possibly be dangerous not just to himself or to Paul but to the bar as well.

"Finn," he says, quietly. "What has happened?"

[takiena_called]

Finn doesn't react to his approach (Finn might very well not have heard him coming, noise drowned out by loss), and when the Twiceborn speaks he reacts with a quick, startled withdrawal and look of fear that doesn't fade away.

After a long moment Finn falls quiet, and says in a voice raw with yelling in fear and grief, "He's gone."

[pwyll_twiceborn]

Paul doesn't sit down beside him, but stands, looking down and frowning.

'He?'

In light of what he knows, that may well refer to Darien - but it's been two weeks since their last conversation, and he has not seen Finn between then and now. Making a wrong guess could be unwise.

"How long have you been out here?"

[takiena_called]

Finn shakes his head, dazed,looking up at the sun to check the time (looking away again, quickly--it doesn't make sense). "I don't--I--it was one in the afternoon, the clock--"

He looks back up at the Twiceborn, confusion writ across his face (he's fallen to the ground sometime during the hours he was outside, but he didn't even notice until now).

[pwyll_twiceborn]

Paul checks the sun also, but he already knows: whatever specific time it is here, it's moving out of the late afternoon and into early evening.

"Will you speak to me of what happened before then?"

Whoever Finn has been crying for - Darien or another - there must have been something that occurred to trigger the break.

[takiena_called]

"He's gone," Finn repeats, emphatically, as if Paul should known this and growing frustrated that he doesn't. "He left, he--"

Finn chokes himself off and shields his face with a hand.

"He was going to work on the ship but he never came back and it's gone, Twiceborn, it's gone and he's gone and I can't find him and he's gone and why do I keep losing them?"

[pwyll_twiceborn]

It's not ravens, but a flash of intuition, that give Paul the answer to this puzzle - not a difficult one, really, seeing as Paul only truly knows one other person with whom Finn has allied himself, here.

"Many of those who leave this place also return, eventually," he points out, while his mind attempts to work overtime to make up for his earlier ignorance.

What has happened to Mr. Wellard?

"Until you can find out more, you should perhaps not be so quick to assume him lost."

[takiena_called]

"He wouldn't leave," Finn says, looking out from behind his hand with the confidence of someone much younger than he is. "He wouldn't, he would say, he'd tell me where he was going or leave a note or tell someone-- he wouldn't just go. Something must have taken him, someone--the ship's gone, but there's no way to the ocean,"

He stops for a moment, staring out into the lake (and the strange little inlet that's formed there though it doesn't catch his attention for more than a moment) before shaking it off as useless.

Quieter, he says, "Lost things stay lost, Twiceborn. Or they aren't recognizable when they return."

[pwyll_twiceborn]

"Sometimes."

Kevin Laine, Paul thinks (always Kevin first; it always will be). Diarmui dan Ailell. Jennifer Lowell, gray and cool in the sitting room of her apartment with her belly grown large.

And now he does sit, carefully folding himself down onto the lakeside next to Finn.

"But not always. I was a lost thing. Matt Soren was - you likely haven't heard that part of what happened, but he died in battle and returned, as much himself as he ever was. The Paraiko were long thought lost before they were found again."

[takiena_called]

Dari. Owein. The seven kings whose identities are so tied up in the Hunt, whose personalities are so evident and clear that they laugh at the idea of names.

(Henry.)

Finn listens, quietly--

(There is pain when the Twiceborn mentions the Paraiko. The Hunt is bound to a cave to sleep until (his) the Child's return at their hand (by his hand as well), and he is bound in this small bubble of a world.)

--though his expression does not change from hopelessness except for a brief flicker of anger that quickly dies out. Things might not stay lost around the Twiceborn, but that he does not see how that could hold true for him.

[pwyll_twiceborn]

Paul looks across at him, and says, "You may not believe me now, and that of course is your right.

"But remember, too, in a place such as this, assumptions are dangerous things to make - whether it's assuming the best, or the worst."

[takiena_called]

"I know," he says finally, looking away. "It's just that they don't, not for me. Or if they do--if I do--"

He mouth quirks into a small, humorless smile that is gone when he glances back at Pwyll. "It's hard to think that way. I do not know if I can. But I will try?"

That's more than he'd say to most people, but this is the Twiceborn. He deserves to be listened to, at the very least.

[pwyll_twiceborn]

It isn't easy. He knows.

Paul inclines his head in acknowledgment. He can't ask more of Finn than that; it wouldn't be fair to, anyways, for who knows where young Mr. Wellard is now? All the same, the attempt, he hopes, will keep him from despair.

"I will find out what I can, if you would like me to try."

[takiena_called]

"Thank you," Finn says, quiet and sincere. He does not think that there is much use, but he can appreciate the effort.