maybe you were the ocean
One moment he is being torn apart by ice and wind, and the next he is not.
When he rouses at last in the meadow the skin is still hot across his cheeks where only hours earlier the ice had split his flesh, only now, there are no injuries and just the slow burn that lingers long enough to tell him it was real (all of it — the contagion, the fairies, Eszka, Khuma.). There is a warm wind, not unlike the one that had brought him back from freezing along the Isle’s shoreline, and it sweeps across the length of his back where it tangles when it meets the mats and icicles now dangling haphazardly off his mane and tail, further proof of his journey.
Slowly, he blinks and looks around.
It is evident by his surroundings alone that he has chosen the wrong path, inadvertently or not. What is less clear is what has become of everyone else; were Briella and Eszka safe? He intends in the next moment to go after them (of course he does), but reality settles on his skin like the snow had before. He is so inauspiciously far from them now that all he can do for them is hope. So, with disappointment heavy on his shoulders, he begins the arduous journey home again — or rather, beyond it, back to the Isle.
Suddenly, it has never been more apparent to him why Texas had grown tired of the redundancy here.
It’s days later that he finally arrives in Nerine, where it costs him another to spend a healthy amount of time hunting the caves in order to establish that Wax is no longer anywhere to be found. It is exactly like her, he thinks, to wander off in spite of his instructions, and so when he combs his memory he determines that another likely conclusion is that she is off risking her health to adventure now with the likes of Magnus, or Ilma, both whom they had met only briefly in the meadow. If it were dangerous, truly dangerous, he reasons, she would know to keep her head low somewhere that she was safe. If she were too stubborn, Magnus or Ilma would surely reign her in.
That’s what he tells himself, at least, in order to keep going and not double-back for her, too — because he’s trying, and desperately so, not to realize that now he has lost them all.
So, with his head low in an effort to dodge a vengeful wind Wane follows the same path through Nerine that he had travelled with Eszka in search of Khuma the first time. He reaches the icy shore in record time, and he plunges on ahead without rest, swimming those same frigid waters to land himself on the same opposite shoreline he had found days earlier. Before today he has never been so grateful for the life he lived on the sea, because whether he had known it or not he’d been training his entire existence for this.
When at last the Isle shoreline is firmly underfoot there is no warm wind to bring him home from freezing this time, and the chill cuts him to his bones. In spite of a body begging for rest Wane makes every effort to sweep the beach for the two paths he had been shown earlier in an attempt to carry on with the mission the fairies had set forth, and find Eszka on his way (or what is left of her, though he has high hopes that the fairies will have been just as merciful to her, too), but they are lost to freshly fallen snow, or even likelier, disappeared at the whims of those same fairies.
It is then that he turns his attention, sequentially, to Khuma. There are no lingering snake trails, likely thanks to the previous snowfall, but Wane scours the landing again in spite of his own better judgement. Here, he thinks, would have been a great place to leave behind a shed or two (but no, always in the cave). Finally defeated, Wane sets off in the only direction he decides is feasible, and if he has learned anything at all about Khuma in the time that they had spent together and all of the ceaseless decisions that had gone into her careful selection of their Nerinian cave, he will still choose the best route to her.
So, freezing, alone, and in the dark he walks, searching. He walks until the water on his skin freezes, and his limbs feel oddly hot. He walks until icicles form and fall, built from the condensation of his breath. He walks until the night finally melts away, yielding to a brighter dawn at last. And there before him, illuminated by the fragile veil of morning light, he sees at last what he has been searching for.
He doesn’t know what waits for him as he approaches the mouth of the cave, but he hopes it will be alive and well.
“Khuma?” He says into the frozen air, and he holds his breath and waits.
@[Khuma]
