The Other bends down so that He can stare straight at his small, round face, and he smiles because it's nice feeling like you're not so small anymore.  "Here," says the Other, taking his wrists gently and holding them together with mechanical aptness, "hold them close to your mouth like this, see?"  He nods, and listens extra hard for what the Other says next, because the important words are muffled by his tiny fingers.  "And then you breathe against them."

He giggles.  "That tickles, Albert."

With a very small smile, He stands. "It should be better though, if you do that in between rubbing them together." 

"Yeah, that's better.  Thanks," he breathes, watching in wonder as his words vanish to smoke in the cold bitter air.  On top of a hill, there isn't much to see.  The ground is dead, the sky is bleak, the school is at least a mile away and he doesn't like looking at people anyway.  He turns again to the pale gray jacket as he scorches his palms.  "Hey, hey, what did you want to come up here for, anyway?"

"To think."

He lets out a comical sigh.  "Well, of course I know that, but what are you thinking about?"

"What would you like to do for a living?"

"Other than school?" he clarifies, because to him school is almost endless.

"Yes, other than school."

He's very young still.  He doesn't know what 'changing the subject' or 'evasiveness' is because he hasn't taken that class yet.  He will in three years, but that's three years away, and this is three years before.  All he knows is that the Other is asking him a question, so therefore it demands an answer.  He shrugs nonchalantly, looking at a leaf crackle and tear underneath his right foot.  "I don't know.  Whatever I want to do, I guess.  I think I want to run an ice cream store."

The Other smiles, and this makes him happy.  He grins in return as the Other simply says, "Yeah.  You should do that, Caesar.  It fits you."  He doesn't know what it means, and he never will.  At that time, it is because he doesn't know how something can fit if it isn't a new jacket (those never fit anyway; the sleeves are always too short) or an old hat (he hates wearing hats; they make his hair stick up at odd angles). 

Now, it is because he doesn't think it fits him at all.  He doesn't really like sweets or sugar anymore, save for the occasional ice cream cone.  He likes to breathe on it and watch the edges moisten and melt, slip down the side until he catches it with his tongue.  He hardly has those because Apple only allows it when their traveling expenses even out the way they should and things hardly work the way they should anyway.

2.  In Relation to Apple

In many ways, he is still a child.  He knows enough for wars and the fall and rise of nations, but knows little in everything else.  He has much time to learn, because he is young, but he'll never realize it, chasing after something too fast and too tall, looking for a shadow in a pitch black room.  His name is a little too big for him; it will take many years to grow into, and even then it will not fit as well as it fits the Other.  He doesn't care though, for he hardly cares about many things these days past the what's-for-dinner's and how-much-is-it-to-stay-at-the-inn-Apple's. 

Apple clearly does not enjoy talking to him as much as he enjoys talking to her, mainly because she's actually talking and he's only teasing.  She drums her fingers on the table once he opens his mouth, or twirls her pen between her fingers.  She seems like she'd rather talk with Landis… but every time he laughs with that sleepy dazed smirk of his, she smiles.  Nonetheless, they talk all the time, isolated by mind and ideas rather than blood.  In his experience, blood only serves to drive people apart anyway. 

It doesn't matter very much anymore what he says, because under those bad jokes about fruits and worms, she knows exactly what he means. 

She also knows that in the end, there will come the day when he will see the Other again, when they won't be on opposite sides, but he doesn't.  He thinks this is the way it will always be, because this is the way it has always been since that unsaid broken promise - and for him, that's almost the whole world.  When the day comes, he won't know what to do, and will probably look stupider than he ever has in front of a person he wants to impress, but that won't embarrass him much because it's always been like that anyway.  Some things never change, because they aren't meant to.

She remembers a scene tucked so neatly within the fabric of her life that she doesn't have the time to appreciate it, but she remembers it clearly nonetheless.  He barges into her room, unannounced and in the middle of the night.  It is hardly surprising, though it irritates her to be deprived of and disturbed in sleep.  She glares at him half-heartedly through her newly-donned glasses as he crosses the carpet and slumps down in her chair, which creaks under his weight with its old age.   Waving a restless hand, "Hey, Apple, I've decided that the reason you're always so grumpy after dinner is because you have a chronic case of indigestion."

"Caesar," she says, with a startling amount of patience it's almost frightening, "does this have an actual objective?"

"How long do I have this time?" he asks, promptly, with a smug and satisfied little grin.  He sounds a little tired, looks a little tired, and she doesn't know why because he never does anything other than sleep all the time anyway, silly child.  She thinks that maybe it is because he spends all his free time – all his time not sleeping – catching up on work he should've done while he was.  She doesn't bother to scold him for it, for he hardly ever listens to her about matters such as that. 

"About three seconds before I start throwing books at you," she answers, and it is admiringly gentle, even with her fingers twitching. 

"Oh, well, I was talking about the chandelier."  Even as he says this, he knows he will think twice before disturbing a woman's beauty sleep from now on. 

"I'm tired, Caesar.  What do you want?" she says finally, rubbing the spot between her eyebrows.

"I wonder, Granny Apple, why you always think I want something when I come to talk to you?"

With a sigh, "Very well then, what did you come for?"

"To ask you for something, of course," he replies, with a grin.  "I want to borrow a book from you.  Not to read, of course, I've read almost all your books already.  I just need one so that I can put it over my face tomorrow during the meeting so they won't start poking at my face once I fall asleep.  Dupa said the next time I did that without a helmet I'd wake up with an eye gauged out and I like my eyes where they are thankyouverymuch."

"And you figure that one of my books can serve as a helmet?"

"Hey, hey, Apple, your books are deadly," he says, in the tone of a parent explaining to a child.  The irony amuses her, and she smiles.  "They can knock someone dead if aimed correctly, or at least induce a coma when you actually start reading from them."

She reaches into a drawer with the few possessions she has and grabs a random book from the three rows with four books each arranged neatly in a line in alphabetical order by author last name, flinging it to him carelessly.  He catches it with both hands and looks down at it with an upside-down smile.  It is only when he speaks that she knows why.  "Not this book.  I don't want to have this book in my face while I'm sleeping."