Fine
He played with the talisman. Took it in and out of his mouth to feel the difference.
It was about three centimeters long and a centimeter wide, roughly cut gold with a transparent line down the center. No identifying markings, no spell words etched in its side. Plain.
If he sold it, the gold would be worth about thirty pounds, but he didn’t think that’s what Bradley meant when he said to send what the value is to him. That could mean anything. Definitely above what it cost for parts.
When the talisman was in his mouth, he could feel Elias below his neck.
It was late and Elias was likely sleeping now so it wasn’t as pronounced.
But his chest felt tight with the kind of stress that doesn’t go away even in slumber.
Victor carried his own stress at the base of his skull and in his shoulders.
At night he would be forced to suffer both. He always woke up in overstimulated agony as he was too afraid he might swallow the talisman in his sleep.
During the daytime Victor would get small flashes of pleasure occasionally. But mostly they were negative emotions: humiliation, which Elias appeared to carry in his palms and his cheeks if Victor had the talisman out of his mouth, and sometimes genuine fear at the base of his stomach.
While boarding the train to Scotland, he felt at the bottom of his throat a frisson of loneliness so severe he had to stop and catch his breath, forehead leaning against the train wall.
He wiped the tears that sprang to his eyes and assured the conductor that he would be all right, then retreated to his seat as quickly as possible.
He hated this for obvious reasons, but it was also terrible to know someone’s humanity in this way.
Feelings were private; most people were able to conceal the majority of them. They were the sort of thing you read on someone’s face or had spoken at you with their words.
It was another thing entirely to feel their feelings with your own body.
He knew when Elias did something that made him happy: his joy was centered in his spine and made Victor want to wiggle.
So strange compared to Victor’s own head joy that centered around his smile.
He even got flashes of desire followed by pangs of loneliness, which made Victor feel ill.
This sort of closeness? It was blasphemous.
It made him want to tear off his skin at the worst of times and sob uncontrollably at the best.
“If it was your wife,” Alain had said, standing in his empty house with lace doilies and pink walls, “it would be worth it.” And by God did that have new meaning.