[ Where Johan sees emptiness, Tenma sees life. The trees and grass about them sway in tandem with the cooling breeze, the pregnant hum of creatures all around, busy continuing their mysterious existence, and far in the distance are people more like them, with speech and hopes and dreams and fears of their own. It strikes him then, how no matter how far away he walks from this center, he would never be alone. The presence of the others on his mind are like friends and families chattering away just in the next room, there if he but calls them.
The question betrays what the younger man sees instead. ]
Home. Probably.
[ He shifts his eyes from his company back to the landscape sprawled before him, trying to borrow Johan's eyes to see the absence rather than the presence, note the spaces between people, the lack of. And he sees it, the uneasiness settling into his bones, and just the same he rejects it. ]
We should go. The others will worry if we get there late.
i.
The question betrays what the younger man sees instead. ]
Home. Probably.
[ He shifts his eyes from his company back to the landscape sprawled before him, trying to borrow Johan's eyes to see the absence rather than the presence, note the spaces between people, the lack of. And he sees it, the uneasiness settling into his bones, and just the same he rejects it. ]
We should go. The others will worry if we get there late.