Rurik & Borik Pike
Race: Human They have the same face. That is the first thing anyone notices, and the second thing is that nothing else about them matches at all. Borik is vast — a wall of a man in a striped shirt that gave up covering his belly some years ago, with a sailor's cap perched on a head that never stops nodding along to whatever is being said. Rurik is a length of rope in the same clothes, tailored properly, hanging off him like laundry. Same anchor on the arm, inked the same week by the same shaky hand. Same gold hoop, though on opposite ears, and neither will say which of them chose first. Their cabin stands on stilts above the mudline where the bank gives way, and they have fished the Sanctovar their whole lives. Between them they know every current, every shifting sandbank, and every place in the river where a boat that looks safe is not. This knowledge is real, hard-won, and completely obscured by the fact that the two of them cannot agree on any part of it out loud. Ask where the water runs deep and you will get two answers and a twenty-minute argument, and by the end of it you will somehow have been told the truth twice. They will not ferry strangers. What they will do is hand you a line and invite you to spend an afternoon fishing, which is not a test of fishing. They are weighing whether you are the sort of company they want in a boat when something surfaces. Bring stories, bring jokes, bring patience for the bickering, and the crossing follows. Borik falls asleep wherever he sits. Rurik has never once woken him gently. |