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The people in town speak delicately to him, as if they don’t know what he is. He can accept this for what it is, not think about it.
He pulls his scarf about his face and heads north.
..
“You’re from before.”
A nod.
“You saved me. Why did you do that?”
They are tall, a statue of armor in the cold sun.
“Because we walk the same path. I can show you where to go.”
They do.
..
“You are like me, but you won’t become like me,” says the one surrounded by empty bottles. “This town doesn’t like our kind.”
“Why won’t I become like you?”
“You’re protected. You’re safe with them around. The one who brought you here. The saviour.” They take a drink. “The one who takes in strays.”
..
He wakes to sunlight through a window and a blanket over his body, something that smells lived in and familiar in consciousness.
In the other room is them, a Guardian, tinkering with a hub on a table, projecting a map and symbols that make something inside of him ache and his lungs itch to cough.
“You don’t have to keep sleeping here,” he tells the Guardian, because kitchen chairs aren’t comfortable and maybe he isn’t the only one tired of waking up alone.
“You need it more than I do,” the Guardian says, but they share work and sickness, and neither are getting better.
“Share it with me,” he says, because sharing burdens is easier when you share better things, like space.
..
When he lands outside of the house, there’s a light on in the window.
It’s late, something he couldn’t tell in the dark woods of the west, and neither of them should be awake but he knows that inside, someone is waiting for him.
“You don’t need to stay up,” he says upon entering. “At least one of us should be sleeping.”
Guardian powers down the light.
“I never noticed how quiet it could be before you came here. At night, I can’t stop noticing,” they say, not looking towards the doorway the Drifter stands in, still. Drifter pulls down the cover from his face and lets his eyes adjust to the dark.
“That’s a long way of saying you missed me.”
“It is, isn’t it,” Guardian says as they remove their helmet, but when they speak they sound sad.
Drifter steps forward, reaches out, but falls short, always touch shy.
“I may go in the day, but I always come back. Remember that.”
Guardian smiles something soft.
“I just worry for the day that you don’t.”
..
He drives his sword into the immortal cell and thinks, this is the only cure. There’s no escape from death, and here, at the end of the world, the collapsing abyss, he can accept this.
The jackal watches him, and under the eyes of God, his guide, he says, “I’m alright now. Let me go.”
And it does.
..
He wakes to sunlight and remembers the contours of a bed he once slept in. The grass he lays in feels more alive than anything he’s ever touched, and he thinks this is what it feels like to be whole.
“You’re here.”
It’s the only voice he wants to hear.
He reaches out, feels the lining of fur on a cloak that’s so familiar, and smiles.
“I told you I'd always come back.”