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The things Tommy knows are split like this: he remembers the time before Wilbur, like a big hazy blur. There isn’t much in it; just tired and hungry, and sore feet and one place and the next. He thinks a long time ago there was someone else, gold hair and gentle arms, but he doesn’t know them anymore.
He knows the moment he met Wilbur Soot. He’d stuck his hand into his pocket and he thinks he would’ve gotten away with it, except that Wilbur turned at just the wrong moment. Tommy’s hand tangled up in stolen coins and the billow of Wilbur’s cloak - blue and soft and the closest to a home that Tommy has now - and Tommy had tried to run.
(He manages about three steps, back then, and then there’s a lilting call like the line of a song from the man he would’ve stolen from. Tommy skids to a stop in front of a spray of sparks in front of his face, blinding, freezing him still.
They’re gone as quick as they appear, fading as Tommy blinks light-spots burned into his eyes, and then Wilbur catches him, an arm around him and wresting the coins back from his hands.
“I’ll be keeping these, thanks,” Wilbur had said. “How’d a kid like you learn to steal? Hasn’t anyone taught you better manners?”
And Tommy had looked up at a young face and brown curls, something like awe in his chest, and all he could say is, “Teach me to do that.”)
He knows the time before Wilbur and the way it ends in that moment. Everything is beginning again. All at once, in a shower of sparks and a single line of music, Tommy begins to learn some things anew. The things he knows expands to include this - the time that Wilbur is here.
(It doesn’t occur to him to think of the time that Wilbur will be gone. He prays this knowledge will not come to him, not for a long, long time. It is not something he needs to know.)
But this is something he does know: the way Wilbur’s fingers strum over guitar strings on cold nights, and the way the music hums in the air like there is another layer to it. It’s music like sparks, like a glowing ember; a song shining with the heat of something more beneath it. Magic. Familiar, glowing, warm, Wilbur’s.
He knows the way Wilbur speaks, smiling and clear with a voice that lands not in words, but in the meaning behind them. There’s the way he speaks to others - a lie on a silver tongue as he talks the town’s nobility in circles, or a spell-binding story told on a tavern’s hearth in return for dinner and a night’s lodging. It’s laced with that sparkling warmth, the kind that draws you in and makes you feel at ease. Makes you forget there’s other people in the world besides Wilbur. Makes you forget to pay attention to your purse or your valuables.
Tommy also knows the way Wilbur talks to him, and the way he smiles a little different when a crowd is not watching him. The way his eyes crinkle, and the way his shoulders loosen. The way he plays his guitar without magic threading through it. The way he performs just for the sake of the thing.
They’ve never been able to stay in one place for long. Street corner scams and plotted heists keep their welcome short, and they’re careful to never overstay it. They spend their time traveling. Tommy has seen busy cities and quiet hamlets. He’s slept in the backs of wagons and under trees and out in wide-open fields under the stars.
“Won’t get a view like this living in one place,” Wilbur tells Tommy, one night they’ve set up camp at the tip of a cliff. A road winds down behind them, to the twinkling lights of the town they’ve left behind. Above them, the endless cosmos shines down too. “Traveling isn’t so bad, is it?”
Tommy doesn’t mind it, truth be told. There’s an allure to the road, and he knows Wilbur feels it too - the call of The Wanderer is never quite so visible as it is in Wilbur’s eyes turned up at the stars. But for Tommy - for Tommy, sometimes he catches a glimpse of a kitchen table through candlelit windows, and something inside of him yearns for a place he’s never had. “It’s all right.”
“Just all right?”
“The bed’s shit.”
Wilbur laughs, quiet. “Fair enough. Hey, we did well back there. Next town we get, we’ll stay in an inn for at least a week.”
“We’d better,” Tommy says. “And I want good food every night. Fuckin’, steak or some shit, and some real breakfast too. And desserts. I want cake, Wilbur. So much of it.”
Wilbur’s still laughing. “Don’t push your luck.”
Tommy lies back against the bedroll he’s already set out. He pulls Wilbur’s old cloak - the blue one, big, familiar, and soft - over his shoulders. By the fire, Wilbur strums at his guitar, firelight illuminating his hair and reflecting from his glasses.
“One day,” Wilbur tells Tommy, with that old guitar on his knee and his own cloak over his shoulders— “One day, Tommy, we’re gonna make it big.”
It’s a familiar story. One of Wilbur’s favorites. Tommy sits in the grass and listens.
“The grand tales of Wilbur the Story-Weaver and Tommy Innit, daring thief to rival Robin Hood himself—they’ll spread far and wide. It won’t need to be us doing the telling anymore. They’ll all know our names and they’ll love us. We’ll be famous, me and you, and we’ll live in the nicest house and eat any food you want, every day.”
“We’ll have a garden.” Tommy adds to the story today. More details to Wilbur’s same old tale. “And we’ll live there long enough to harvest it.”
“We’ll stay as long as we want. And if we get bored, we’ll go anywhere else.” Wilbur strums a chord. Their little fire crackles. “This I promise you, Tommy. One day, we are going to be something.”
And the truth is, Tommy doesn’t even mind if Wilbur’s story never comes true. He doesn’t mind if they never get their house with riches to spare, but if they have a little cottage and a place to grow flowers—if the world doesn’t know their name, but their neighbors do—that, Tommy thinks, would be fame enough.
But he lies here on his back and he looks up at the stars that Wilbur loves so dearly, like the sparks of magic that had once seared his eyes. Crystal dewdrops on dark leaves; brilliant pinpoints of light on an indigo tapestry. He looks at them and listens to Wilbur’s guitar and a soft voice.
This is the last of the things Tommy knows: Wilbur is not a man of faith. His magic is his own, not given or bought or earned. There is no god he prays to, no shrine he visits and no temple to leave sacrifices in.
But sometimes, in fingers on strings and eyes turned to the stars, there is reverence in him all the same.
“Someday,” Wilbur is saying quietly between the muted strum of strings. It’s an offering to whoever it is that listens, an oath, a prayer: “Someday, I will tell a story so strong they will all listen. I will follow the path in front of me, and I will see it to its beautiful end.”
Tommy closes his eyes. He listens.
“I will find what I am looking for,” Wilbur whispers, “and so will the ones I love. Someday, we both will find peace.”