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Kyryll hardly noticed the passing of months, flitting along the tendrils of time. He noticed, however, somewhere along the lines of spring and harvest and the decay of summer, that he had stopped picturing the fisherman in pale frosted light and started seeing him in gold.
By the time the treeline along the harbor had their greens turn amber and the boats came in heavier for the cold, Kyryll had found that when he closed his eyes and thought of the man who lived along these streets, he no longer saw winter at all.
₊˚.𓇢𓆱 ⋆.☘︎ ݁˖
He had found Illuga squatting down a boat's half-repaired hull, grumbling this and that at a plank that just won't sit right.
"You're just going to stand there looking useless again?" the smaller man asked without looking up.
"I quite like this view."
Illuga snorted, then shook his head, before going back to his work. Kyryll found himself smiling just a bit too comfortably at the exchange.
₊˚.𓇢𓆱 ⋆.☘︎ ݁˖
In the low fire bounded by the humble fireplace in Illuga's house, the two of them sat in front of, for companionship, let's say—just the two of them sharing the warmth before the hushed night turns cold.
Illuga passed him a share of grilled fish, something that would have been impossible seasons ago in fear of the winter frost, when every visit was shadowed by a death that the man did not know he died. Now, there was simply he crackle of fire, low and gentle, just as the tide washes from the outside in gentle ripples.
"You've gotten better at showing up when nothing's wrong," the fisherman said, looking towards the duke struggling with the food.
"Is that a complaint?"
"No," Illuga admitted. "Not really, no."
₊˚.𓇢𓆱 ⋆.☘︎ ݁˖
"Boats need pulling in before cold sets proper in the winter," Illuga said, elbow-deep into his net in the early grey of morning. "Harvest's short this year. If you want to stay around, might as well make yourself useful, no?"
It was an audacious suggestion to the duke—but the man doesn't know that—not yet, at least. For something so ordinary to be asked of him, most other nobles would have become offended, their disgust at the activity obviously in their painted faces, however for him …
Ah, well to be invited in such a way by Illuga himself, how could Kyryll dare to refuse? He was wanted and that was plenty enough of reason to oblige—much more that there was no debt or demand that held him to the tending—just that a humble fisherman made effort to ask, simply because he was someone whose company he liked having around.
"Alright. I'll help … young master."
There is an anxious ebb in his heart, if he was being honest. Admittedly, he is aware that autumn is not his dominion. The fall of the leaves were never his to manage, and so is the state of harvest. Kyryll is rather apprehensive about it all. He had spent so long defined by what he governed that it had come to the point where he did not know how to exist outside its reason. Then there is Illuga, whom of which he's still uncertain of existing beside without the gnaw of duty or guilt holding his being upright.
Still, he will go. Not as the keeper of a season; not as a man trying to make amends for a death, that in this life, had never happened. He simply will come and go as Kyryll—as himself, whatever that means—standing knee-deep in saltwater with only a fisherman's company and nothing more.
₊˚.𓇢𓆱 ⋆.☘︎ ݁˖
"You're hopeless," Illuga said, more delighted than disappointed before tugging at the knot the noble had made to tie proper. "How does a man live this long and never learn how to tie a decent knot?"
"I've had … other priorities."
"Clearly the wrong ones, hm?"
The golden sunlight hits Illuga's visage, soft and low and warm, just as it would be to the waters in the quiet afternoons, and the sight makes Kyryll stare in wonder—wondering how the next seasons would be with this man, and for how many more winters they could share.
The thought catches him off guard, old grief still haunting mid-laugh.
Oh, how that fire catches its glow wrong along the lines of Illuga's throat. A wrong angle and the terrible instant of blooming Frostlamp flowers ghosts the skin instead of the warm spill of light.
He stills.
"Hey," the Illuga's brows furrowed. "What's wrong?"
How he hates it—the fact that he had no answer that would not make him sound like a manic fool speaking of a death and a loss that never happened. Instead, he stares at the fisherman, watching his own reflection shake in the dark of his pupils, and oh, how he despised it all.
He began declining after that.
"Busy," he told the man, which was an obvious lie. All because Kyryll never once had dubbed himself as someone who was too busy.
In truth, it was all just him tending to his fears all alone, turning a haphazard wreath of flowers he had made to twist and turn along his fingers—reminding himself of the particular horror of the village, of the men carrying a body out to lay in the blanket of cold—and picking at a healing wound just because he couldn't ignore the itch.
₊˚.𓇢𓆱 ⋆.☘︎ ݁˖
It was Illuga, in the end, who had closed the distance.
He came up in the mountain road on a cold clear evening, looking more annoyed than anything else at the hassle he was going for this eccentric fool who's company he had come to cherish.
"You've been avoiding me," he said without preamble, the moment that Kyryll showed up behind the metal gates of the manor. "Months of showing up whether I asked you or not and you suddenly just stop! You better give a damn good explanation, Duke Flins."
Funnily enough, the noble found himself at a lack of words, simply staring at the man who had decided on a hike, in the middle of the night, all to demand an explanation for his behavior. Finally, Kyryll understands that the world is unbearably simple: Illuga had never once needed saving to be ever worth loving. He needed not to die, to be grieved over, or some duke's misplaced guilt to become someone.
He had simply been as he was. And Kyryll had simply been happier for the chance to stand so close to him once more, every single day.
"I was afraid," he finally answered, quiet and honest in the way he had struggled to find himself for the many previous chances. "Of loving you—of treating you as an echo of someone I had already lost rather than you."
"That's a strange thing to be afraid of," Illuga huffed. "When I'm right here."
"I know."
"Then stop being afraid of a ghost and start being here. With me. That's all I've climbed this damn mountain for, Flins."
₊˚.𓇢𓆱 ⋆.☘︎ ݁˖
Later, once all the words and tremors have settled and the fire at the hearth burned low and gold, Illuga found the worn table by the gate—the very same table Kyryll had once held his trades for the man who wanted winter held a little longer than need be.
He climbed up to it without ceremony, his legs haphazardly placed on the surface before sitting there like a strange offering in place of the most precious stones much to the duke's bewilderment.
"What are you doing?"
"You used to stand here and take payment for holding winter, didn't you? Some story the old fishermen tell about you, Duke Flins," Illuga tilted his head, a warm and teasing smile gracing his lips. "So here I am. Consider me this season's harvest, if you're still in the business of collecting what people offer you."
"Young master, you are not stone," Kyryll said, although something inside his chest had already gone helplessly soft.
"No," the man agreed, reaching for the noble's hand with his rougher, more calloused ones to pull him closer. "But I'm better."
Kyryll had held winter for a few gems before losing everything worth having behind it.
This time, he opened it and walked through, gold-lit and grinning with something worth more than every gem he had ever been given in his long, foolish life.