Exit to the Right ??

The presence of the Wild Hunt was generally acknowledged to presage some universal catastrophe, or at best the death of the one who encountered it. Matis, since recently the Wild Hunt's new leader, didn't worry about such trivial thoughts though. With eternity spreading out in front of him, the man he loved finally open by his side, a sister he hadn't known he had until after he had died to dote on, and the acceptance of new friends assured, he was lost. Throwing thunder and lightning at least took some pressure of the rage that had become his constant companion.

Matis didn't care where the severe weather hit that he created. He used skyscrapers as well as mountain tops for target practice, as long as he remained undisturbed by others who would ask for explanations, he was incapable of giving even himself. The rambling and hilly Hampstead Heath however, seemed to turn out a poor choice.

A bout of homesickness had lured him over there. Once settled in, he had rained out a lovely lakeside concert that had been too cheery and upbeat for his taste. The audience had scattered within minutes, their picnics not even half eaten. Their colorful summer dresses, almost too light for the mid of May, lighting up in the shine of his bolts had been quite the sight. And their screams had been a better match to his frame of mind, even though they were mingled with laughter. He could ignore that.

Yet, when even the last, most resilient concert goer was gone and the musicians had dragged their instruments to safety, someone was left behind who was watching him, who had been watching him for a while already. But as all members of the Hunt, Matis was a ghost. Ordinary bystanders couldn't see him.

From his vantage point at Parliament Hill, Matis let his eyes sweep over the surroundings, aiming a bolt at the Palace of Westminster in passing. Despite the bottle of whiskey in his hand, his vision was clear. The bottle was only a prop in a game of hide and seek that he was playing with Justin and Hel. It was meant to let them believe that he was constantly too happily drunk to answer their questions.

In the end, he found neither his love nor his boss looking at him. A slender, unassuming grey haired bureaucrat, resembling after the downpour that Matis had created, a drowned rat, looked disdainfully up at the bolt, splitting the sky right above him. And then he pinned his eyes reproachfully at Matis.

Matis folded his arms, his back straight and his face covered by a bored mask. The man didn't look like a threat. Not sure what to make of him otherwise, Matis opted to approach him with humor. "Who would the fellow yonder be, on the farther shore of the pond?"

The suited man focused on the bottle, dangling from behind Matis elbow. His eyebrow soared even higher as Matis' joke rolled off him. Maybe Matis had taken the one or the other sip from his prop while painting the uncertainty that was festering inside himself, into the skies. "What kind of drunken peasant are you that calls o'er a tarn?"

The speed with which the man had answered humor with insult decided it. The one stranger who had noticed Matis in weeks, could have been heaven-sent, an interlocutor from the outside to whom Matis could have spilled his guts without remorse. But he had to be unpleasant company. If Matis would get rid of him faster when he played once more the benevolent drunk, so be it.

"Tell me where home is," Matis inquired. It was the silliest, most unrelated thing he could come up with that moment and he took care to slur his speech a little at the edges. He lifted the bottle so that the amber liquid splashed up and down the walls of its confinement. "I share. I will feed you before I go. This whisky, there's none better. And as you can see, there is still plenty left."

After a moment, the man smirked. His head shook, the movement was so small and so slow that Matis guessed it more, than that he saw it. Too easy, the man's lips seemed to form before he spoke out loud. "Proud of our palate, aren't we? But we have no idea of what is to come, no idea how to approach the future." The man took a step forward, what still left plenty of ground and the pond between Matis and him. "When I look at you, the way you stand there, I don't think you have any home. Your home, I think, is death. You can't be helped."