a dream from which we cannot wake

Jude

In my head I am hunting for myself
but I come up empty again

She is a minx of a young woman, a spirit he's not used to rubbing elbows with. He had always thought he fit better with the well-mannered, good-girl types - like Sohalia. Or had he just assumed that was who he was supposed to keep company with? Jude can't help but question everything, even things that had felt so perfectly natural. She prompts another laugh as easy as breathing, something equal parts shy and proud. "Actually yeah he was worse off. But my dad taught me how to fight really young." A style unique to Jude, meant for his long limbs and lack of body weight. Plus people don't exactly expect someone like Jude to pack a punch the way he does - underdog privileges and all that.

Jude stares at Noe like she's a painting come to life. Beautiful, yes, but also incomprehensible. He hangs on her coarse, easy words. Anger has never been something so - so blasé. It will take more than her permission to change a lifetime of restraint and suppression, but it's a baby step in the right direction. "My dad used to be angry when he was younger. Like, the bad kind of angry," he confesses on a whisper, accustomed to never speaking ill of his dad in a region like Torchline; gossip was a stronger currency here than coin or even alcohol. "He hurt a lot of people. Himself, too. I think that's why he was so big on teaching me to never get angry." And, the obedient son he'd always been, Jude had soaked up each lesson like a sponge.

Yet Noe puts her advice to the test, glowing like a dying star as anger besets her almost instantaneously upon hearing Sohalia's name. Jude watches wide-eyed, just as captivated by this easy show of emotion, envious even. "Um, yeah. That Sohalia." It's barely a squeak between her clarification and the ensuing tirade, but Jude doesn't really mind. He's used to being talked over anyway, and this time he's more intrigued by what she has to say. It's completely baffling that she takes his side, and his eyes burn without his consent, because he never imagined being absolved of his guilt so simply. "Not sure why she was with me either, but probably not for the reasons you're thinking," he jokes, a little off-color and a shade too dark, but a glimmer of the same sass Koa had been able to pull from him time and again. Must be a Carpenter thing.

Laughing, equally flustered and endeared by her boldness, Jude squeezes her hand as she shakes it and dips his head shyly. "I've never thought of it that way I guess. My mom was taken to be transformed into a demigod right after I was born - I don't know any other life." The motto that has shaped his entire life has always been just keep moving. Regardless of where his feet may take him.

the night is a cavern
I am underneath it, inside it, anything but free of it