tenth rune; frost; audio

[deadelfwalking]

[For once, Koltira isn't using the video function. Instead, there's just his voice, echoing and soft and toneless.]

Ashraf Salib has returned home.

[There's a stretch of silence. He isn't the only one in recent memory--the boy he met, Jack Frost, and Ashraf's friend, the monk--they're gone, too. Koltira hadn't known them nearly as long or as well as Ashraf, but he hadn't missed their disappearances, either.

Still, finding Ashraf gone was a punch to the gut. Despite their rocky first meeting, Ashraf eventually became one of the few people to fully and unconditionally accept Koltira for who--and what--he was. The priest's devotion to his beliefs, his essential goodness, his willingness to learn, his warmth ... these traits were uniquely his own, of course, but they also reminded Koltira of someone else he knew and cared for. Liadrin. A woman just as perfect in her faith as Ashraf, and just as determined to see the good rather than the bad.

She was gone from him, too, though, and had been for a long time.]

I suppose I should be happy for him.

[Another period of silence, and then the feed ends.]

Comments

[moralperil]

...Yelling won't bring him back. It's just. There was a lot of stuff. A lot of stuff I was hoping I could talk to him about. I don't know. This is terrible. [He sucks in a breath.]

Um, th-thank you. For telling me. I'd feel so stupid if I turned up with lunch and he wasn't... he wasn't there...

[deadelfwalking]

[Koltira's not very good at dealing with his own emotions, much less anyone else's. But he does think of Mahdi as a friend.]

Nothing we can do will bring him back. Still, it feels good to yell, now and then.

[moralperil]

--Don't you worry that if you start yelling, you wouldn't stop? There's a lot of things... [Mahdi breaks off that thought and goes quiet a brief moment, then laughs quietly.] I'd disturb my neighbors. I guess you don't have that problem.