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Ever since the desert, Grian had been as distant as one can be… understandably so.
Scar and him had been friends for a good while, at least while inhabiting these sandy mountains. Maybe that was the problem after all: they had been friends, and they payed the price. Naturally, Grian would figure out that there’s a brighter end you can achieve by caring enough, but never anything more than enough. The sort of end that you can’t achieve if you’re in it for the win.
So when he stood in that river, watching Scar chase meaningless distractions while he realized that it was going to be the two of them once again, he couldn’t help but scream. Scream because it’s Scar, and Scar is reckless and perseverant, and he’s a scammer, and a pet-obsessed jester, and he’s an old friend he’d killed before and will have to drag to the grave again.
It’s true it had been the two of them against the world once. But it had been by a set of choices, choices that had been their own.
And it was going to be the two of them again, tied to each other but constantly running in opposite directions, against a world that wants them to relive the desert sun and against the murmur of a stray thought of theirs that chants, with no sign of stopping, about the new cacti ring they’ve built by themselves.