NOVGO.NET MOVEMENT FIVE — The One Who Never Leaves the Room
5.1 — A Confession Made Gently
"This next one," Eremos said, and a faint color rose in his face that had nothing to do with any alter ego at all, "I am considerably less comfortable discussing in front of the entire household, though I understand, given the subject of tonight, that discomfort is not a good enough reason to skip it."
Elowen, predictably, brightened at once. "Oh, this is going to be good."
"Elowen," Ilyrisse said, in the particular flat tone of a mother running out of patience with a daughter-in-law's timing.
"I'm allowed to be curious," Elowen said, entirely unrepentant.
Eremos exhaled, and pressed on regardless. "Desire, for most people, the way I understand it, rises and is answered and settles, at least for a while, into something quieter — a satisfied warmth rather than a continued, burning want. Mine does not settle. When it rises far enough — genuinely far enough, past the ordinary threshold any of you have ever seen from me in an ordinary evening together — it does not fade afterward. It stays, exactly as large as it arrived, and if I do not find somewhere separate to put it, it begins, slowly, to overwhelm every other part of how I function."
"We first noticed him," Vaelira said, taking over again with the particular relish of someone who had genuinely enjoyed being present for this particular revelation, "some centuries ago, in the crystal castle, during what I believe is still remembered in this household as an extremely long and extremely eventful week."
"Vaelira," Ilyrisse said.
If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.
"I'm simply providing context," Vaelira said, entirely unbothered. "The point is, he did not sleep, that week. Not once. None of the women fortunate enough to be present that week slept especially much either, as I understand it, though I wasn't personally on the schedule and had to hear the details afterward like everyone else." She smirked, faintly. "He was, by every account I've since collected, extraordinarily attentive. Considerate, even, in whatever specific way that word applies to a man who has apparently forgotten the concept of stopping. It was Iris, in the end, who finally coined the name that stuck, watching him from the conservatory doorway with an expression I still haven't fully been able to interpret. She called him the Longest Night, and it fit well enough that no one ever bothered proposing anything else."
5.2 — What He Carries
"In power," Eremos said, quieter now, choosing the words with visible care, "the Longest Night amplifies almost nothing in the destructive sense the others do. What he amplifies is presence — attention, focus, an almost unbearable heightening of every sense involved in being close to someone. Touch means more, in that state, than it means to the rest of me. Warmth means more. He is not dangerous the way the Unquenched or the God of Destruction are dangerous. He is dangerous the way any excess is dangerous, in a subtler and more exhausting register — because he does not know how to stop, and because the women who spend time with him, however willingly, however happily, eventually need rest that he has no instinct to offer them."
"I have learned, over the centuries, to set limits for him," he added, "the same way I've learned to set limits for the Unquenched. It is not, I think, a version of myself any of you need to fear the way you might fear the others. But it is a version of myself that needs boundaries all the same, because left entirely unchecked, even the gentlest excess eventually stops being gentle."
Flora, who had gone faintly pink through most of this explanation, spoke up in a small, careful voice. "I like him," she offered. "He's very warm."
"Flora," Vesalia murmured, though there was, for once, real warmth underneath her own careful reserve.
"What? He is."