There were no words, only subtle kineses that made themselves apparent in the stranger's stance, his drawn face, like iron filings seizing into patterns under the influence of passing magnetic fields.

Irineu squinted, saw the small, pale body in his mouth. He felt the ridiculous urge to bite down for him, as prescribed by instinct. But such seamy volition quickly died in the air between the two men.

What had killed it was the desolate grey eyes, which shone with the color & intensity of burning salt. The firmness with which those eyes stared into his, darkening the rest of the world until they were all the remained of the tapered face, which had been unmistakably the face of an auspex, an anchorite, a desert father.

Mostre me. (Show me)

There was no heat nor urgency behind the bloodless demand. Finally something like recognition dawned, molasses-slow, over the dim eyes and the pockmarked cheeks.

Again and again his gaze was drawn to the mouth, half-open, composed with careful slack, as if it held all the answers to any questions he could possibly harbor, as if it instead of a frog housed a single black point, the nexus of all things—Pythagoras's monad, Democritus's atom, the blazing arche of Heraclitus.