Lost Memories (Slayers, Xellos/Zelgadis)

Xellos leaned against the thin wooden fence that surrounded the Wandering Sorceress Inn and watched. It was a bright, sunny day. A warm breeze played across the grassy yard that separated him from the inn, blowing through his hair and into the inn through the large open windows. A handful of horses grazed in the yard. Several patrons sat on the terrace outside, enjoying their meal amidst the beauty of the day. Voices drifted across the expanse of the yard towards him, chatter from both inside and out, but he was too far away and not interested enough to put forth the effort of trying to listen in.

A horse wandered over. He ignored it for the moment. It nudged him insistently with its nose. Xellos sighed and reached over to scratch it on the nose. The horse whinnied happily at him.

The inn was busy. It usually was at all of the traditional mealtimes, though it hardly lacked for patronage outside of that. The good weather seemed to have drawn a particularly large crowd. A line of people lounged on benches near the entrance, waiting for a table to clear up. The inn was supposed to have some of the best food in the region, certainly the best in the town, though Xellos had yet to test that.

Most of the patrons came to the Wandering Sorceress for the food or because it was the best inn in Zephilia in terms of accommodations. Others, like Xellos, knew of the town because of the sorceress sisters that it had spawned, for most that was the younger of the pair, the one that the inn was named after, Lina Inverse.

That was not why Xellos came here, or why he kept coming back, over and over, and spent his time staring at the inn.

Amidst the chaos of the common room, there was one particular face that stood out. Xellos would have been able to pick that face out of a crowd, no matter the distance. He let his hand wander up to scratch behind the horse’s ears as he watched the black-haired human move through the common room. He mingled with commoners and the wealthy alike, always polite and slightly hesitant as he spoke to them, taking their orders. He never lingered, never spent more time talking to anyone than was necessary. The human was wary of others, though he hid it well. Every so often, when one of the guests said something that made him nervous, he would reach up and fidget with a mask that was no longer there, forgetting that he no longer needed one.