He sat on his simple bed. It wasn't the most comfortable, but he did not desire that; he took a strange comfort from the lumpy matress and too-thin pillow. He meditated, his breathing rising and falling rhythmically, building in an accelerated fashion into a flurry of heavy snorts. His eyes snapped open.
Fierce, nut brown orbs survery the room, hawkishly. It is not a room many would expect to find in a fortified building such as the Citadel, decorated in furs and pelts, skulls and antlers, strange glyphs and figures marking the blank spaces, daubed in a suspicious red ink. It's almost as though the occupant wanted it to be less a room, more a cave...
A small raised surface near the bed is covered in sheets of something like vellum, and many more lay ragged, torn or crumpled around it, all half-written letters to someone. None of them were right, and now it seemed too late to write anything. He smiles ruefully at the thought of the recipient. Gone, and lost to him, but still alive. Unlike so many others he has lost.
Standing, joints snapping and creaking from extended inactivity, he walks over to a desk covered in furs and hides and plates laden with bones and half-eaten lumps of food, and brushes ash off of a tray. He places a dusty block onto the tray, and proceeds to pick up a flint and piece of steel from nearby, sparking them off each other until he ignites the block. He blows out the flame, and allows it to smoulder, breathing in the smoke with a sigh.
Above the smoking incense, the wall is clear of pelts and glyphs and adornments, aside from a bracket holding a skull. Humanoid, but feral and dangeorus looking, almost canine. He touches his forehead to it. "If only you were here to have seen him fall, brother." He sighs deeply. "I am sorry I do not speak to you more. It has been... hard without you. But I am learning. Growing. And..." He stalls. He smirks to himself. "I think I have found family. You would like them."
Moving away from the skull, he grabs a bottle from a crate on the floor and pulls the cork out of the neck, releasing a sweet honey smell, accompanied by a fragrant trace of mint. He raises the bottle to the skull briefly and mutters "Yeghes da." He lifts the bottle to his lips and takes a long drink. Pick Me Up. He smiles, his back a little straighter. He turns and faces his door, and the mirror beside it. He looks over himself. His skin almost marbled with scars, clumps of matted fuzzy hair on his shoulders, chest and forearms, the beginnings of tone to his muscles.
He smiles. So long since Orlagnon. So long since Taklamak. So long since he first trod Emmerix. So long since he came to the Lions at the gardens in Persia. So long since the shores of Albion. So long since the forests and gorges of Kernow. He never noticed how much he had grown. Seemingly to noone, his eyes staring at the reflection of the skull, he speaks. "You would be proud, brother."
