Through the morning mist, the sound of coughing might be heard echoing out from the cavern’s darkness. Leander lay against the cool rock, a feverish cheek pressed achingly to stone. His lungs felt brittle, dry – and there was crusted blood around his nostrils, though he couldn’t remember when the nosebleed had occurred. He had awoken fitfully in the night, only to find that Kora had gone.
It hadn’t surprised him. He was getting used to her abrupt vanishings – the way she came and went without notice. If truth be told, his sister wasn’t exactly what he’d expected or even imagined. Of course, their parents had only known her before she’d become the wintry woman she was now, which meant the stories he’d heard had solely taken place prior to that point. Obviously a lot had happened since then.
Still, whenever they had spoken of Kora, he’d envisioned someone meek yet well-meaning, perhaps nervous, but softly sweet – a conjured image that hardly bore resemblance to the icy mare who’d found him asleep in a snowdrift at the beginning of spring. This Kora was something of an enigma in comparison. She was odd, he thought; though perhaps a better word was incongruous.
Whenever they spoke of their shared history, something in her whispery voice sounded distant and evasive. At times, she was so detached that he fell silent, though she hardly noticed. At others, he swore he glimpsed moments of substance fluctuating like cloud cover beyond the coolness of her gaze. When that happened, she would leave – almost as though she couldn’t stand to be near him – and yet she still returned.
He couldn’t make sense of it, especially in his current state. There were hours when his mind spun, his thoughts dizzyingly fuzzy at the edges; he was getting weaker by the day. Though he had no appetite, he knew he needed to eat. Wearily spurring himself from the stone floor, Leander slowly made his way to the cave’s entrance. Tufts of hardy northern grasses peek out from the snow – there would always be snow this far north, no matter the season.
Despite the rather mild breeze, Lee shivered. In the rising light, many of his bones were starkly outlined through splashed palomino skin. He nibbled inattentively for a while, staving off bouts of faintness as they came in waves. At one point, Leander glanced up to see an arctic fox crouched in the snow some yards away. “Don’t you look comfortable,” he commented offhandedly, envious of the animal’s dense fur as he continued to shudder with cold – his sickness more to blame than the actual weather.
