regnavitque iter rex, yamiojo

8.

Too fast for Ciaran to have paid any attention to the surroundings, they had landed in a room. It was pained soft blue with two twin-sized beds on opposite sides of the room. There was a single window opposite to the door; it was covered by blinds preventing the light from outside entering the room. The floor was grey, some sort of stone he could not name. The room had no personality; it reminded him of the rooms he had seen in hospitals. Clean but somehow suffocating, stifled, empty. They were made only for utilization- no comfort or luxury, just like this one.

Looking at the beds, it hit him just how tired he was. He wanted nothing but to collapse onto one of those beds and sleep this chaotic mess of existence off. Yet he just stood standing there, waiting for something to happen without having any idea what that something was. He stepped forward to the middle of the room it seemed like looking at a mirror, the two sides were like parallels- both of them looking exactly alike. The room was perfectly symmetrical, save for the two people in it. Sebastian with his angelic aura and a devilish smile, and Ciaran's dullness. He hated it, this feeling of inferiority that Sebastian brought. He preferred to have the upper hand, always. He was bred for it, for the diplomatic games and the cunning smiles, for manipulation and winning. His family knew no religion but victory; they knew no God but the power of thought.

They were in many ways a conventional family, albeit with an unhealthy amount of wealth but in double those ways, they were corrupted by the very worst he had ever known. His grandmother would be grief-stricken if she knew of her son's deeds. Theirs was a great family, one with honor and pride, but now they were merely known as the people who had initiated the goriest and bloodiest of wars the world had ever know. The world... No, his world. What had they meant by that?

"Sebast-" The boy glared at Ciaran, but he went on regardless with curiosity taking away all his senses, "-ian, what did you mean by my world? Surely you cannot mean this is not the same one but another place entirely?"

The boy took a long look at him, and then walked to one of the beds, and promptly sat down, swinging his legs over it, he answered, "It is a fact much too difficult to process but given the circumstances, and your experience, I think you do understand what we mean."

He did, but he still wanted confirmation. He was waiting for somebody to put it into words so that he did not have to.

After a minute or an eternity of staring at each other Sebastian sighed, "Yes. Different worlds, an entirely different universe, however you want to put it. I do not know much of your world, I am afraid. I am willing to learn but..." He spread his hands as if to gesture to an array of reasons displayed in front of him. He did not seem angry anymore. He looked right at ease without his irate incandescence. He took that as an opportunity to get as much information as he could. 

"But...?" 

He lowered his back so that he was not looking at Ciaran anymore but, again like in that previous room, staring at the roof. He glanced upward, but could not figure out what was so interesting to him. It was the pale blue of the walls. 

Sebastian had his hands in the air, moving as though painting a picture. A picture he could not see, but one that still mesmerized him like the way a snake charmer's song enchanted you even as you knew it was a spurious act, and some songs could not be even heard, for that was what the farce called for. Here, he could see no colors, but the dark blue sparks bouncing off his hands, and yet, he wondered how beautiful. How heavenly, how exquisite they were, and his hands, too, the movements so utterly graceful. He did not know how many minutes had passed before he noticed that Sebastian was speaking.

His sheath of serenity was pierced; he felt irritated at Sebastian, at himself. "Can you stop that?"

He looked confused. Sebastian, the person who very nearly ended his life, whose eyes flashed a magical and simultaneously threatening blue, who could somehow do magic, and was probably one of the most dangerous people he had ever known in his perilous, miserable existence, dared to look confused and innocent even as he completely overturned Ciaran's already deteriorating  existence into shambles.