Work Text:
“The egg shatters; the stillborn bird’s song halts. Waves wash bloodied sands where the hourglass bleeds. Freed from their cage, the flock joins in chorus once more, ‘fore a dark sun swallows the end.”
Another of Azem’s prophecies, delivered during breakfast with the nonchalance of a weather report. Pothos had grown used to them over time, but this one left him particularly unsettled. A restless sort of sensation bordering on intrigue.
“Another ominous message, I see,” he responded dryly. “You’ve grown more cryptic as of late.”
Azem hummed, his white gaze still anywhere but in the present. “The further ahead, the more unclear it is,” he explained, finally facing his traveling companion. “I suppose the mind struggles to comprehend visions so distant.”
Pothos looked at him with a mix of bemusement and concern. “Or maybe your mind grows more and more scrambled,” he said lightheartedly, without malice. He took another bite of his omelette before continuing, “So what do you think this one means, then? Or is it too ‘far ahead’ for your mind to comprehend as well?”
Azem smiled at him—for a blink, he returned to him. “Let me ask you first,” he turned the question back on him. “What do you make of it?”
“Eggs usually represent new beginnings, but the one in this prophecy is shattered. The stillborn bird’s song could be a metaphor for unfulfilled potential.” Pothos’s eyebrows furrowed slightly. “Freed from their cage… could it be referring to freedom from restraints of some sort? And the dark sun…”
He shook his head in frustration. “That part eludes me, I must admit.”
“I am reminded of a society I’ve come across in my travels,” Azem shared, “that believed the star hatched from an egg, in its beginning. But is the egg our world, then, or is it the bird?”
Pothos let out a huff. “Are you going to keep giving me more riddles?” he grumbled, though his eyes remained serious. He answered anyway, “If we are going by this, then… the egg could represent the current world.” He pondered the words for a moment longer. “And the bird… could refer to change, transformation, even destruction.”
Azem nodded slowly. “That is possible.”
“What about the dark sun?” Pothos asked. “That is where I’m truly stuck.”
A solemn silence followed. Azem rarely exhibited a serious aura, but this was one of those times. “I dread to consider my seat could be related.”
Pothos, seeing the shift in Azem’s demeanor, fell stunned. He had come to know the man’s carefree attitude, so to see him suddenly so grave… “Your seat…” he repeated, his frown deepening. “You’re not saying—”
Azem shook his head, debunking his own theory. “It isn’t possible—not for myself, at any rate. Perhaps a successor, but I will not live long enough.”
Uneasiness settled into the pit in Pothos’s stomach. “You speak as if you’ve no choice,” he said quietly. He studied Azem’s dark features, searching for any hint of emotion, but as usual, he was unreadably stoic.
“That…” Azem averted his gaze again, lifting it to the skies above. “is one event I cannot decipher. I’ve seen possible deaths—those avoidable, in battle and in strife. Warnings I can heed. But anything definite…”
A statement not merely ominous and cryptic, but one which held a deep sense of finality. Pothos swallowed a knot in his throat. “You think something will happen to you soon,” he murmured, locked onto Azem’s profile.
“As certain as a black hole devours all that comes near.”
Pothos inhaled a deep shuddering breath, his hands clenching into fists within the confines of his sleeves. “Are you scared?” he blurted out before he could stop himself.
The words hung in the air, heavy like impending storm clouds. “I am,” Azem admitted eventually. “I know not whether the underworld awaits me, or something worse—and it’s the unknown that alarms me. But I have work to do before I sink into the tar.”
Pothos’s throat dried at the man’s confession of fear. It was an odd sight. Azem seemed indestructible, like nothing could ever truly harm him. To hear him admit to something as human as fear…
“But you don’t plan to slow down, do you…?” he murmured, already knowing the answer.
Azem’s eyes crinkled in amusement. “Of course not,” he replied, his smirk returning too easily. “You should know that much by now.”
Pothos let out a sigh, exasperated but not surprised by the response. “I suppose I should.”
The two sat there, the strange atmosphere between them weighing down on their shoulders. Then Pothos spoke again. “But, if something does happen to you—” He didn’t finish his sentence, the words refusing to make it past his lips.
Azem watched the man, his expression unreadable. He could hear the unspoken words hanging in the air, and knew what Pothos was trying to say. He gave a small scoff, an attempt to lighten the atmosphere. “You’re worried about me.”
Pothos’s face heated up in a mix of embarrassment and annoyance at being called out so blatantly. “I’m not—” he tried to protest, but he couldn’t deny the truth of it. He was worried about Azem, about the darkness that threatened him. He’d spent all these years lonely, and now that he had this nettlesome, perplexing, beautiful man…
He did not want to let go.