"D'Hara will rise again," Kalam whispered into his clay mug. It was filled to the brim with a creamy liquid the color of autumn, and the rich scent of pumpkin, nutmeg, cinnamon, and cayenne might be what caused his blonde ninja wife to lick her lips.
"When Anders is dead, maybe," she clarified for him. She didn't know if he was talking to her, since it was his habit to rant to anyone who would hear- even if he was his own audience. Perhaps especially so. This was a man who was no stranger to mental masturbation.
The game set on the table involved many hues. Yet...there were only two colors. "This is wrong. I am getting fatter, not with the fake fat armor, but with real fat. The stuff that comes when you sit around all day drinking hot cocoa with marshmallows instead of fighting." He sent a single piece on the game board careening across the room with another. "Winning is a bore. It's the playing that we enjoy." Whether this was for himself, for his wife, or for the little fruit bat that hung in a corner of the room was a puzzle that didn't need to be solved.
"I think you might find these helpful," added his wife as she set several buckets of paint on the table. In her childhood, she once saw a prism flaunted by a traveling merchant. How she had wanted it. Her parents didn't have the coin, though, but now, now these buckets were full of the colors that the prism revealed. "Look hard enough, and there are more colors than two hidden in every piece."
"Perfect." Kalam shot up with an energy he forgot he had, splashing the buckets all over the table. "Now..."
"...we can play."
They smiled at each other.
