It's a difficult question, in a way. The first one, rather; the source of the ring is someone he could easily prattle on about for hours, and he runs the thumb of his left hand along the underside of it in what has become his most recent comfort fidget. As to what changed...it's hard to say. The only person he's ever met in Verens who could tell him about those earliest days was Reim, and Reim was only thirteen at the time, and seeing things from rather a cranky perspective given the circumstances. There's a great deal that Kevin knows must have been different, going simply from what he knows of his own world. But there are still a great many gaps that he's only ever going to be able to fill by going home, and living it.
"...I was with the first group of Otherworlders to arrive, back then," he says, figuring the beginning is as good a place to start as any. "At that time, there was no one else here from -- our world, so -- no one could tell me...how this and that had turned out. Nightmares and the like caused things to break around me and one of the first things I did was bring the roof of a shed I was sleeping in down on my own head. Because of that, it wasn't safe to be inside much...so, I slept rough. It suited me very well, back then. I was used to it anyway, and -- ah. I could go wherever I liked in the city, you know? I would -- run around along the rooftops to avoid crowds, and I kept little caches here and there, hidden stores of tea and things. Like a squirrel."
It's rather a rough start to a story, but Kevin doesn't sound at all embarrassed or regretful of any of it. It's just how things were, and he means it when he says the lifestyle suited him at the time. More importantly, it's the first thing he can think of that he absolutely knows was not at all like it will be when he goes back home, not at all like it was for this woman's version of him. When a legendary mass murder shows up on your doorstep -- and they'd have known exactly who he was, they'd have had to have him tended to by a doctor and anyone working for Pandora would have known exactly what the mark on his chest means -- you either kill him or you keep him close. Kevin is certain he would have been under house arrest, certain it was the Rainsworths who bothered to make up some sort of alternate explanation for his presence. Here, in Verens, he had freedom. He went where he pleased when he pleased, without the threat of a trial and execution hanging over his head the instant someone breathed his surname. No one cares at all about red eyes in Empatheias.
no subject
It's a difficult question, in a way. The first one, rather; the source of the ring is someone he could easily prattle on about for hours, and he runs the thumb of his left hand along the underside of it in what has become his most recent comfort fidget. As to what changed...it's hard to say. The only person he's ever met in Verens who could tell him about those earliest days was Reim, and Reim was only thirteen at the time, and seeing things from rather a cranky perspective given the circumstances. There's a great deal that Kevin knows must have been different, going simply from what he knows of his own world. But there are still a great many gaps that he's only ever going to be able to fill by going home, and living it.
"...I was with the first group of Otherworlders to arrive, back then," he says, figuring the beginning is as good a place to start as any. "At that time, there was no one else here from -- our world, so -- no one could tell me...how this and that had turned out. Nightmares and the like caused things to break around me and one of the first things I did was bring the roof of a shed I was sleeping in down on my own head. Because of that, it wasn't safe to be inside much...so, I slept rough. It suited me very well, back then. I was used to it anyway, and -- ah. I could go wherever I liked in the city, you know? I would -- run around along the rooftops to avoid crowds, and I kept little caches here and there, hidden stores of tea and things. Like a squirrel."
It's rather a rough start to a story, but Kevin doesn't sound at all embarrassed or regretful of any of it. It's just how things were, and he means it when he says the lifestyle suited him at the time. More importantly, it's the first thing he can think of that he absolutely knows was not at all like it will be when he goes back home, not at all like it was for this woman's version of him. When a legendary mass murder shows up on your doorstep -- and they'd have known exactly who he was, they'd have had to have him tended to by a doctor and anyone working for Pandora would have known exactly what the mark on his chest means -- you either kill him or you keep him close. Kevin is certain he would have been under house arrest, certain it was the Rainsworths who bothered to make up some sort of alternate explanation for his presence. Here, in Verens, he had freedom. He went where he pleased when he pleased, without the threat of a trial and execution hanging over his head the instant someone breathed his surname. No one cares at all about red eyes in Empatheias.