It had taken Joshua so long to respond that for a moment, Clive thought he'd gone unnoticed. "You were faraway in your thoughts," he said. "Where were you whiling away the time in your head?"

He nudges his shoulder against Joshua's, light and playful, even if their conversation is heavier than that. It seems their conversations are always that. They never simply have time to talk about what they missed in one another's lives. Not the hardships and harrowing moments, but the quieter ones in between. Clive has a million questions he wants to know about his brother being forced to grow up too young - what he lived through, if he had even a little bit of a chance to be idle and do the things most young men were able to do.

But he doesn't push. Sometimes, Clive is afraid the answers will hold too many similiarities to his own live in servitutde, just of a different sort.

"Maybe he did," Clive agrees. "Or maybe it's just the nature of them that they shine. I don't see him being particularly interested in decorating the world, whatever the reason."

Clive shifts to face Joshua when he moves, smile still on his face. "Maybe it will. Or maybe it will be a seething mass of shifting power and people scrambling to find their place in it. But at least it won't be a world we lost."

"Have you eaten?" Clive asks. "Or have you spent all day in the stacks again and forgotten?"