He still liked to come to the downstairs part of the tavern, even if he found himself unable to indulge in any of the wares.

The hum of voices rising and falling, the sound of cutlery and ceramic plates clattering against each other, the noise of bustling and work in the kitchen, it was all a welcome noise to him. Something that filled up his mind and gave him things and people to look at, bits of information to take in in a way that wasn’t too overwhelming.

But tonight, it was a little different. There was a melancholy sort of nostalgia to the noise and the bustle, as it would be the last time he would be hearing and seeing it. Despite the strange thoughts of downhearted, sort-of homesickness that drifted about his mind, he knew he had to go.

Tonight would be his last job, then he would be free of his contract. Approaching the counter, he immediately sought the eyes of the innkeeper, finding an urge to give a polite smile before remembering that his static, pumpkin-grin didn’t allow for such things. Demurely lowering his gaze instead, his gloved hands quietly grasped the small, woven bag that he was to deliver. The innkeeper, who knew a smattering of English, quickly leapt into a broken explanation.

“Take to Inti, green around doors and windows.”

Admittedly, it wasn’t much to go on, but he’d found a knack for finding even the most remote and out of the way locales in this strange city. As he left the busy tavern, he couldn’t help but notice the manner in which his odd figure made the crowds part, the faint hum of voices following in his wake.

All curious, but uncomprehending. He was a stranger to them, and while he’d spent a good number of months in this city, he’d only been able to learn a scant few words of the language. Actually, languages, he was fairly certain there were at least two. It didn’t help that he was somewhat avoided as far as general socialization was concerned.

He was a tolerated outsider, but still, an outsider all the same.

The talk was left behind as he went out the door, dusty grey coat flapping behind him in the warm afternoon breeze. Even through the more concealing coat and breeches, the sun’s warmth soaked into his clothes. It was a welcome feeling, even if there was a part of him that felt it should feel like…more.

His plodding footsteps lightened a bit as he approached the stables adjacent to the tavern, a soft neighing greeting him as he stepped through the stone doorway. It was one of the few moments that he could say that the pumpkin grin on his face felt like it accurately mirrored his mind, his black gloves reaching out to an equine that was practically the same shade. Though the horse had no hands, it reciprocated the feeling, gently nosing at the Horseman’s pumpkin head with a soft nickering.

It hardly took more than a few moments to lead his mount outside the stables, but just as he had swung his leg up to rest in the stirrup a figure came running from a side door of the tavern, an arm upraised to flag the Horseman down.

The fact that the only thing the younger man had was a small package kept him from reacting any worse than a small flinch. Still, it would definitely be a bad send-off if he’d slipped and cracked the innkeeper’s son over the head…

The lad, Itzli, didn’t have nearly the best command of English, though the name he mentioned was one that the rider knew well enough. Palta, or at least that’s what it sounded like. A young maid that lived on the opposite end of the city. He’d been there probably a good number of times since he’d started running deliveries for this tavern, and all at the boy’s behest.

With a graveling cough, the Horseman tried to speak, giving the boy a hard look as he swung down to grab the parcel.

“Ah-Ask her f-father. Talk to—”

“No, take!” The boy pleaded, dark eyes practically begging the rider not to question the matter further. Which, he was polite enough to let go with nothing more than a quiet nod, but this still seemed too ridiculous. It wasn’t as though there seemed to be much difference in social standing between the two, despite the fact that they lived on opposite ends of the city, and neither seemed like they were forcing their attraction to each other. Honestly, he thought they would be a good match. Granted, there was only so much he could discern from seeing the two separately.

Really, he figured that this level of exchanging gifts probably warranted at least a proper visit. Then again, he was becoming increasingly certain that his idea of courting and these peoples’ idea of it were two vastly different concepts.

Still, he accepted the request with little more than a nod, urging his mount into a trot as they headed out to the road. It would probably take a good part of the afternoon to get there, but he hardly minded. This was the one part of his living in this strange city that he had no issues with.

He could let himself get lost in the motion and feel of riding, the sensation of being one with the powerful animal atop which he sat. Of being a Horseman. It made things feel right, for once.

Even if he had plenty of good things to say about his current locale, there were plenty of bad things that he was having trouble standing. It was hard to say how exactly he’d gotten to this…city, though the descriptor didn’t feel quite right to him somehow. He’d simply been nearby and rode up on his horse. It was hard to say if there had been a reason why he had been nearby at all, but at some point he noticed that he quite simply had no memory of a before to that point. Even the few things he’d had on him, an old handkerchief, a sealed-shut locket, a little carving knife, and a carved whistle, didn’t tell him much. Neither did the sword, the pistol, or the hatchet that he always kept at his side.

The apparent amnesia hadn’t even been something that he’d really thought too much on, until someone had asked. When he wanted to stay, using a need that the tavern had for a runner, he’d been able to prove himself a reliable and trustworthy worker. It wasn’t until he’d tried to actually speak to the other members of the tavern staff that he’d really begun to notice that he just…didn’t fit. His memory was a blank up until being outside of the city of Patiti, and there were so many things about himself that didn’t fit in with the inhabitants, language barriers aside.

He dressed in a coat with breeches, all dusty and grey with soot, they were more robes of bright, warm colors that were hand-woven. While he could recognize human faces, at least enough to know that he was not (and he should be, a part of his mind whispered), little bits of their features were unfamiliar to him. Skin like copper, dark eyes, black, straight hair…

Occasionally he’d seen attempts at curled styles, the notion triggering some familiarity that made him wonder if he’d had hair like that before his head had been replaced with…well, whatever lay underneath the dusty gray pumpkin.

He’d never tried taking it off, something about the very idea filling him with a raw sort of terror the likes of which he could barely describe. For now he was just fortunate that no one had asked, or the ones that had were easily diverted.

And it hardly seemed to matter when he was riding. The air rushing around him, the sound of the city blurring in his would-be ears until all he could do was passively register it going by.

But, as with many things here in this city, it couldn’t last. He couldn’t truly get lost in the act of riding, of the powerful feeling of things feeling right. He had a job to do, after all, and if there was one thing the rider prided himself on, it was his adherence to his promises.

A sense of Duty…

Besides, he had been to the drop off point in question at least once before, and landmarks were becoming familiar the closer he came. The homes were nice-looking in this part of town, the rider supposed. They looked cleaner, at any rate, more decorative, though he had gotten the hint long ago that there were things about these people that didn’t quite sit on whatever spectrum he remembered of how to gauge these sorts of qualities.

He rode up to the familiar abode, seeing the mosaic set in place above the door of a winged serpent. He’d seen this one around a lot, it wasn’t exactly a strange sight anymore.  Getting off the horse, the rider carefully trod around the tile designs set into the floor. Some he could easily recognize as flowers, simple patterns interweaving in and out, and more off to the side, set into the walls of this walkway were images that he had definitely noticed the last few times he’d had to deliver here.

A humanoid figure laid out in yellow tile was the most obvious, and clearly among the more important given its placing right in the front where it could be seen immediately. The immediate ones after were, a little more perplexing and less easy to recognize, a golden disk with a human face set into it, what looked like a woman dressed in silver, and a man dressed in green with a club in his hand. As he went to the actual entrance, the rider’s eyes peered over every mosaic, and ended up lingering somewhat on the one of a red-faced being with horns. Something about it definitely stoked some form of recognition in his brain, though it was hazy and fleeting, and overall didn’t feel particularly important. Just another part of this strange city that didn’t quite fit right with his mind.

He tried not to be too putout when the delivery was concluded with a stiff and forcibly distant sense of gratitude. His appearance marked him as an other in this society, and his attempts to talk didn’t help matters much; it felt straining and he’d been told that it sounded like he had little bits of stone in his throat. So he tried to keep things as polite as he could, though he couldn’t help returning to the notion that he would be leaving all of this as of tonight.

They’d told him that there was not much beyond the city limits, that people who left the city tended to not come back, but at this point, being out in the wilderness was definitely more appealing than staying in a city where he was an outcast no matter what he did.

As he got back onto his horse, the Horseman headed back out the gate and rode down back the way he’d come, eager to get to the main road and finish up his deliveries for the day.

It did not take him long to get to the neighborhood where the boy’s beloved lived, the rider absently glancing at the new murals lining here and there. The serpent was still a prominent figure, though he did notice a somewhat different building style on this end of town. More sprawling, and a lot more metalwork here and there that caught the eye with its intricacy, even if the depictions of skulls here and there was a little off-putting. Stonework was the hallmark of the neighborhood surrounding the inn, and now that it looked at it, it did look like two very distinct schools of thought were at play in this city.

 As he got off the horse, there was a brief distraction in the form of a small plot of land and a few people standing by. As he was about to walk past them to the gates, another person came out of the home, a servant perhaps, and began to speak with emphatic regard as he pointed at the plot of land, which appeared to just be home to an old tree growing around a stone. The people gathered around it were quick to answer back, their reply just as agitated as the servant’s. For the moment, the rider was just content to be a fly on the wall, and very much not part of this discussion, but given that he was coming in with a horse it was a little hard for him to merely pass by unnoticed.

In previous instances, he’d been able to leave the package, as per the innkeeper’s son’s wishes, but this time the arguing at the front gate was drawing too many eyes. And, given the volume everything was reaching, it didn’t take long for the man of the house himself to show up.

Granted, the rider did not quite realize who had come, until the man had turned to him and demanded to know what he was doing loitering at the gate.

Taking a moment to shore up his determination he started to speak, and hoped that his throat would not give out on him.

“I-I’m here t-to d’liver a package. For Palta.”

The man did not seem the least bit happy at that, looking between the Horseman and the aforementioned package with suspicion. However, before anything could be done, like shoving the package into the man’s hands and simply riding off, the man made a questioning noise, gesturing in askance at the rider.

Correctly reading it as an overture to introduce himself, he drew up a little straighter.  

“I am, am th’ Horseman.”

“…Palta?” The man then asked, indicating the package, the aforementioned Horseman nodding and hurriedly handing it over when the man gestured that he wanted to see it.

He couldn’t help a sinking feeling in whatever passed for his stomach as he handed the thing over, worried that he’d made some sort of mistake. Especially when the man opened it, and came up with an ornate, woven flower.

My last day here and I think I am about to get in trouble for something I did not do, was the thought that went through the Horseman’s mind as the man looked up from the gift to him, eyes clearly searching his face for some hint as to what this was about and probably why his daughter would be receiving it.

A few words were offered in the man’s own language, though the jerk of the head to the Horseman himself seemed to make his meaning clear enough. But when the Horseman actually tried to answer, and by that he pointed at himself and tried to reiterate his aforementioned title, the man waved him off, voice ringing out again with insistence and more than slight irritation.

The problem with that was that the Horseman had no idea of what the man wanted him to say. Presumably it was about the gift, and the fact that it was for an unwed lady, perhaps also the fact that it looked like a gift of courtship?

…Oh God in Heaven, he didn’t think the Horseman had been the one to put this together, did he? But how could the Horseman even go about explaining, he didn’t know how to and his throat likely wouldn’t even hold out long enough for him to do that!

Though as the rider frantically deliberated, the man appeared to lose his patience enough to want to find something out about his mysterious visitor on his own. With an angry grumble, a hand shot out to grasp at the ashy gray pumpkin, fingers latching onto and beginning to lift it away from the Horseman’s neck.

Immediately something cold and curdling leapt in his throat, his shoes skittering on the stones as the rider yanked himself out of range with a shout ringing out into the open air.

But, unlike the quieter, merely gravely toned tenor from before, his voice boomed like a thunderclap, reverberating with a power all its own.

“STOP!”