It was funny somehow, divulging all the information now when he'd tried so hard to distance himself from it before. He didn't know why he'd bothered now; he didn't know why he'd bothered with anything though -- things happened, life went on. He didn't care anymore who knew what. His once-secrets seemed far away and distant, like they weren't really his to keep, so what did it matter who he told? The words would all disappear in time, as people died, as people disappeared into the ground. In the ultimate scheme of things, there would be no proof that anything had ever existed. He wasn't even a speck on the timeline. He was less than a dust particle. And that was disturbingly comforting.
Rachias is my daughter,
he told her. Arkham is my other son.
There had been another girl in the litter, but she hadn't been his. More confirmation in his head that Kaena was a whore, a slut, and utterly unbefitting any kind of family life. It was funny that it should be her, of all the stray women he could have fucked (and might have fucked). But he never wondered about what it might have been like with anyone else, and he never imagined that perhaps he had other children somewhere else, by someone he didn't remember at all, and in a place he might not have ever been.
Laruku was not a drifter. His mind and body had always been anchored whether he'd liked it or not. He did not try to leave, and his mind rotted in place from the lack of exercise. And the truth was that Rachias and Arkham were very much the same. They had only left Inferni because they hadn't belonged, had never and would never belong. They belonged no where. After all, they never should have existed in the first place (just like him). Does it matter?