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Peter's smoking pipe is part of the lonely and its 'smoke' is the fog of the lonely.
Peter always takes smoking pipe with him on his "voyages" by sea. However, he has never smoked it in the house and does not seem to be addicted to smoking at all, although he does not let it out of his mouth on the ship.It lies dusting in the cupboard while he's home, and the question is why?Elias tried to 'see' why that was, but the loner was as usual in his repertoire.
So one day Peter went out to the supermarket for groceries and Elias was left alone with his morbid interest in everything.Of course he took it.He knew well how to use smoking pipe and had used them himself more than once in the older days.The cradle was ordinary, too ordinary, something in the style of Peter.And now he wanted to move like the matches he had left from using the pipe earlier, but noticed that it had not been extinguished, which was odd. Cradles go out quickly, but not this one. It wasn't as if Peter had taken it out or smoked it in front of him. Something wasn't right here.
Taking his first puff was... strange. Instead of the familiar tobacco, he felt cold and indifferent. Putting aside the idea that it was strange, he decided to take another puff, and another, and another.
Peter comes home and smells an unusually damp smell coming from...the bedroom.
-Elias, I hope you didn't touch mine- before he could speak, he burst into the bedroom and found...nothing. Elias was gone.
-oh shit.
Peter found Elias in the lonely. He was sitting staring at one point without moving.He got him out of there as fast as he could.It took Elias about a week to recover from his "hospitable" stay in solitary. Peter took care of him. Did everything he could to help him recover, and didn't forget the normal needs of the human body. After that hellish week for Elias, he began to recover, and it was...hard. Had Peter seen Elias cry for a long time, and had he ever seen him cry at all? Not from laughter, not from fatigue, but from fear. That one trembled and laughed and burst into tears. The sight was imprinted in Peter's mind for life. He hugged him and he sobbed nonstop for about seven hours. Then he fell asleep. And Peter didn't let him go. The whole time he wasn't just there, literally shielding him from everything that could be. He woke up to feel Elias' eye twitching. His eyes were still wet and staring into the void.Peter wanted to get up to make breakfast and help Elias become himself, but he gripped him so tightly that his knuckles turned white. They remained in this position until lunchtime. Still deciding to get up for a snack and something warm to drink, Peter literally carried Elias as he was still not quite himself.
-forget what happened tonight.
-good.
It was never mentioned again, not even in divorces or quarrels.The smoking pipe stayed with Peter at all times, as well as any items that might have contributed to the direction of loneliness.Elias took another week off and recovered almost completely.
Elias' unhappy muttering about the untruthfulness of the historical film made Peter smile.
-Now it's him-Peter thought, to which Elias immediately replied, which took him out of his thoughts.
-Of course it's me.
Elias, though he served and belonged to the eye, but he stood on thin ice, for the consequences of his service had made him lonely.