"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
baby, when I'm in your arms, I can make honest sense of love and war's alarms
She does not hesitate when she hears this call.
She had not hesitated the last time, although her purpose had been different than those who had converged upon Pangea, answering the dark god’s call for death, and she does not hesitate again. The sickness still rattles in her bones, it still blossoms in her throat, and she knows better than most what it will take to drive this from her veins. She cannot heal it on her own. Cress cannot heal it. Tiphon cannot. It will require a magic greater than any that they have to offer, which means that she cannot heal it from others.
If she is to truly bring comfort during these troubled times, she will need to find a cure.
So she does not hesitate.
She simply lifts her head, frowning at the border, before turning back to her precious family. She gathers her girls close to her, pressing a kiss into their skin, sweeping her lips across Vulgaris’ cheek giving them one last look before taking a running start and launching herself into the sky once more. She cannot stay behind if there is hope on the horizon; she cannot stay and let others do the dirty work.
The flight to the Mountain is quick and she is not terribly winded when she lands, the cool breeze sweeping across her elegant neck, lifting her crimson mane. She remains quiet near the back, watching with intent hazel eyes as the fae steps forward. He is hard and unforgiving and she wants to apologize, even though she has no blood on her hands. Instead, she just frowns, looking at the ground and feeling a bitter sadness sweep through her, the loss of Rhonen still seared into her very bones.
When he releases them, stamping his hoof, her gifts are stripped from her.
There is a small cry in the back of her throat when she reaches for her healing and feels nothing in return. Her eyes are wide when she glances up, searching the fae for answers that do not come. Terror grips her, races through her, when she realizes that she has nothing. Her wings are gone, and her body feels strangely light without them, but it is the loss of her healing that packs the largest punch.
It is as much of her as the very air she breathes.
It is the reason her sister is alive, the reason they survived curled on this very ground.
But she doesn’t protest, she simply swallows and nods, her fine head turning toward the North, where the Isle rests beyond Hyaline. The others around her begin to splinter, not pausing to begin the journey and she straightens her shoulders, beginning to pick her way down the mountain with hesitant steps.
The journey is slow—much slower than she is used to traveling.
There are no wings to assist, nothing to drive her forward faster, and without her healing to feed her small bits of relief, she can feel the ache of her illness more profoundly. Her cough returns, blood crusting on the corners of her mouth, and her breathing is labored, which keeps her from running like some of the others. Instead, she walks steadily, as quickly as she can, her stride purposeful.
She takes as straight of a path as possible, cutting through Hyaline, splashing her way through the shallowest part of the river that she can find, and then skirting the edge of Taiga. When she reaches the edge of the forest, the land beginning to bleed into the more coastal region of Nerine, she cuts straight to the water. She finds a path that slopes down a forgiving cliff, and she walks it slowly, her head hanging low so that she can focus on each and every step. She stumbles, once, and she notices with startling clarity just how narrow the path is. Several rocks skitter before her, and she swallows the fear.
She cannot be afraid—not now.
She must be brave, for Sabbath, for Adna, for Vulgaris, for Dovev.
Bolstered by thoughts of her family, of her loved ones, she makes her way to the beach, the ground turning soft beneath her hooves, and then to the ocean. The feathers on her legs begin to grow wet, clinging to her legs as she steps further and further into the tide. She fights to keep her own worry under control as she continues to wade into the water, finally letting go and trusting in the tide.
Her hooves leave the ground and her legs begin to churn underneath her as she pushes herself forward into the simmering sea. The waves are not strong today, but they are strong enough, and she has to fight to keep her path straight. She lifts her neck as high as she can as she swims, trying to keep the water from her lungs, but there are several times when the tide knocks her to the side and she swallows the brine.
She coughs as she swims, temperature dropping the closer she gets to their destination.
Her muscles ache. Her lungs protest. Her nose burns from the saltwater she’s inhaled. But she doesn’t stop swimming. Cannot stop swimming. She ignores the familiar exhaustion that crawls through the back of her mind, the darkness that lingers there, as if it could tempt her to simply give into it—to simply give up. Part of her wants to curse the faeries for taking the gifts that would make this trip bearable, but she understands their dilemma, understands the lesson that they are trying to teach.
And so she simply accepts it.
She simply continues to swim, training her mind on her loved ones back home and the importance of what she was trying to do. She continues to remind herself of it, pushing forward until her legs touch ground once more. Relieved, she pulls herself up, the water draining off her sides as she emerges from the ocean. Immediately, she begins to shiver, brows drawing together as she moves further inland.
She cannot imagine the Isle is pleasant anytime of year—not for a girl raised in the Tephra heat—but it is made worse by the water still dropping off her sides. For a second, she pauses, forcing her mind to work past the initial pain, the initial discomfort. When she is ready, she opens her eyes and begins to move forward. There is nothing she can do but see it through until the end.
She coughs again, blood dripping from one nostril.
She needs to see this through.
but there's something primal underneath and it drives this nothingness I seek
Glaciers melting in the dead of night and the superstars sucked into the supermassive
Originally, he’d come to the mountain for a whole different reason.
Originally, he felt like the plain of ice could use some intervention. Perhaps, though, they would simply cast him aside for asking. Tell him that if he wasn’t strong enough then he wasn’t worth it. But then – could they really have created a sanctuary, only for such a sanctuary to throw out sick horses? Surely that’s against the idea of it’s creation. So perhaps… perhaps they’d rather destroy it, than see it fought over this much.
So he’d come.
Not to ask for anything – he knew what the results of that would be.
To tell them what had happened, and to see if they would take it out on him (as long as it wasn’t someone else, that’s pretty much okay) or on the island (sink the damned thing) or perhaps they would do nothing. But then at least, they would know and have a choice.
Of course, none of that would ever come to pass. Or perhaps they already knew.
Because when he arrives, there are several others. He might have missed a message. The important part anyway… he only catches the last bit as he slides into the group that has accumulated, and keeps his thoughts and frowns to himself when the last bit of fairy decree is being announced. You will do so without any of the gifts we have previously allowed you.
It’s done, then. All gone, in the blink of an eye; he shakes his fur, fluffy once more, though he is in fact slightly distressed at the idea that he has built no winter coat. He moves his jaw awkwardly and runs his tongue by his teeth: normal horse teeth, but honestly that’s not too bad. When he flicks his tail absentmindedly, he catches a glimpse of it: silvery white, like it used to be. Huh, so appearance mattered too, then. A lesson in humility no doubt. As if he wasn't being trampled on enough these days. Ah well, no matter.
The worst is his eyes, though. It gives him such a headache. Dizzy, the world spinning; suddenly short-sighted, he needs time to adjust. A lot of time.
The most time, it seems, for when he looks around he is alone.
Damn.
Perhaps he’d better just go back home and wait till the others have finished this fairy quest, because he has no clue what the actual… well, what he’s supposed to do.
The journey down the mountain is colder than the one up. For a lack of dragon ice means a much more, in comparison, susceptibility to the cold. He hasn’t had that problem for long enough, not to shiver and honestly, rethink his going-home for a moment; but he’ll live. If he makes sure to eat enough. Keep moving. Stay warm.
He travels the border of Hyaline and Loess, not wanting to include either kingdom in the trip; not their fault that a bunch of willing horses now rampages here, though, he still can’t help but wonder what they are doing, or supposed to do anyway. What a mess is this. He wonders what the others back home will say. Changes he’d brought about himself in his own ignorant stupidity. Ah well, that’s what he’s good at now, isn’t he? Making bad choices at the worst of times. For a moment, he wonders what his life is even worth. All the good things he’d done so far, well, most of them are to rectify his previous mistakes.
He stops mid-thought, one hoof still hanging in the air – but a memory of Nerine as it used to be, when a whole different thought had stopped him like that, awakens him. The hoof lands, and he takes a moment to look around. A border of three countries; green trees, red trees, and a lack of trees. Technically this is probably still Hyaline, he believes. Seeing as he has such a high vantage point; a cliff-like structure though further on it lowers quickly into the Taigan redwood forest.
Forward, then, is Taiga; beyond that is Nerine. Home, as much as Icicle Isle is; but for the people who live there, not for the landscape. He should have figured that out sooner.
He’s quite happy that Taiga is occupied by Lilitha and her desire to make a herd-land, free for all, so he has no worries in passing through. He moves through the trees slowly, shivering once in a while because the wintery chill is amplified by the eerie fog that still holds here, by the lack of sunlight (especially now, at night) that is being blocked out by the high and dense canopy.
Some love it for this eeriness. Some stay here for the memory of the forest it once was; Leilan has no such memories, because he had been gone form Beqanna long before the Reckoning, and returned only after Taiga’s drama had taken place. No fondness then, for redwood pines. No hard feelings against it either, though.
He does not stop. He does not stop to eat, nor sleep, because he’s cold and he only wants to go home. He does honestly have no idea what he’s doing, that the fae had sent the group of horses this way.
He wants to stop in Nerine, to be honest – but there is still so much to do on Icicle Isle. Even if, in the end, he is the only one wanting him there (he has no illusions about how dependent he is on his fellow Nerinians moving there; if they don’t want him to lead they’d only have to say so); even if that is the case, there is still so much left undone. So as much as he wants to pause, seek his sister, his mother, his children (expecting Thorgal and Chryseis to be here, because they hadn’t been on the Isle), his wife; he does not. These days he feels like he has no time to do anything, because of the other claimers on the island. Had they not come, or had they left when they knew what opposition they would face, things would have been over with by now.
But it’s not his nature to give up anything, certainly not now.
Not when, besides his own life goals and achievements, there are other things at stake.
He doesn’t want to think of newborns with the Plague.
He sees one, up ahead though. Well, not newborn, not any more. Strong enough to bear it, it seems. Briella, the adopted child of his niece or, of her mate – not quite sure. Probably wasn’t Heart’s idea.
He follows then, into the water. Curses under his breath but, not loud enough for the girl to hear. Or the shimmering boy nearby – the coat colour reminds him of Sabra. Hadn’t she said she had children? If the boy had wings, he didn’t have them now; funny how some traits are so ingrained in our memories, personalities, that they make up part of what distincts one horse of the other.
But honestly, he feels very much like himself right now.
A fucking idiot.
Not stupid enough; he’d chosen the shortest part of the sea to cross. Part of his brain is surely working.
It’s just a part he usually shoves away deeply.
A summer coat, nothing gleaming but the chocolate colour in his eyes, that he’d received from his father upon birth instead of like Ea, the colour-changing ones of their mother. Soaking wet, and as shaky as the opalescent kid that approaches Briella, perhaps they’d come together.
There are others now, and he’s late. Not too late, he thinks, for everybody is here. Nalia, wingless, looks almost naked. A young mare, to which he smiles as he hears the mutterings under her breath. A bay mare, looking sickly, yet she’d made it here. The Hyaline queen who’d seem fit to insult him the moment he’d questioned her as any border guard would have. Some other mare he doesn’t know. A colt, a filly. Leliana, recognizable by the red and browns he already told her befitted Tephra the best, no doubt. Perhaps there may be more to arrive, still.
So this is where the journey had gone to.
Isn’t that just awesome? He could have stayed here and safe himself the trouble.
He keeps himself warm by keeping himself moving; however impatient he may look, prancing in one place, he's not willing to die in all this.
you set my soul alight
HTML by Vanilla Custard
Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
Cradled in the sea, with the waves breaking across her back (over, and over, and over again) had been the last time he’d seen her.
It isn’t hard to conjure her memory, the way that her hair had looked, wet and limp and fallen in against the gentle arc of her neck, or the way the soft colours of her body came together like continents. It’s only fitting that he finds her here again, existing just as he’d left her, chasing the tides of an endless ocean that would wax and wane eternally — like he’d pressed ‘pause’ before he’d walked away instead of just looking across his shoulder with something he didn’t recognize clouding his eyes. He wonders now if she remembers the way that they’d left things, that he’d given her a memory to hold when her hands had been reaching and only empty before.
It isn’t why he’s come, though.
He isn’t here to unearth a crooked grin as she kicks up ocean spray in her wake, though he does so anyways (a byproduct of his own good nature perhaps).
Today is about something bigger, something that has been gnawing at his flesh (eating away at him like acid might have). Today he is searching for Khuma and their missing egg, an activity he had not had the foresight to see coming, and one that he was not enjoying in the slightest. The cave had been, by all accounts, something she’d worked so hard on preparing and the logic behind abandoning it alludes him still.
Khuma has always been just slightly beyond his grasp though, hasn’t she?
It’s only as he draws near Eszka to ask her if she’d seen a snake and egg duo high-tailing it out of the kingdom that he sees how somber her face is, like something heavy is sitting up on her shoulders invisible to him. It’s only as she tells him what she’s learned, that there’s a contagion spreading like wildfire across the country, that the events leading up these moments rearrange themselves into a pattern that is suddenly readable.
Khuma did not leave for the fun of it.
Khuma left with their unborn child to bring it somewhere safe, and likely the closest place, the one that he sees now for the first time looming like dark clouds on the horizon, newly found but as old as time; Atlantis.
So, they are standing there together with the waves lapping at their ankles when the first call from the fairies comes. A moment of hesitation settles like dust between them before Wane finds the courage to meet her eyes and Eszka seems to read him and know exactly what is to happen next. There are older parts of him that might have left without a second thought, parts that would have gathered Wax beside him and run back home to a world that didn’t fester in its own disease. There are newer parts, however, that tell him he has so much more since he’s left.
Wax is here.
Khuma, and their child who would hatch into something any day now, are here.
Eszka, and the way that something inside of her reminds him of land adrift at sea, is here.
So, that moment lives and dies, and when it is gone they go to the mountain - together.
He doesn’t know what waits for him.
While Wane understands that the task ahead is to be arduous, it isn’t until they break free from Nerine’s vast expanse and begin the journey to the mountain that the gravity of the contagion truly strikes him. It’s a journey he’s made now a few times over, at least to the meadow and back again, but it feels worlds away from what he knew of it then. The silence now is deafening.
They travel first through Taiga and the ancient redwoods, and next Hyaline, each one hauntingly devoid of most life, and what little of it that the pair do come across are better off described as walking corpses with their xylophone ribs, sunken eyes, and raw, hairless flesh that reeks of rot and malnutrition. Alive, once, though it’s difficult to picture them that way now.
Wane, despite his better judgement, finds himself wondering after Khuma and their egg. He wonders if they’ve made it to safety. He wonders if they’ve needed him while he’s been gone, if he’s letting them down in these quiet moments by not seeking them out first. He tries not to picture Khuma bleeding from her nose and her eyes, rake thin with her hip bones sharp as knives, but inevitably, the image sneaks in.
When it does he makes a joke at Eszka’s expense to see if he can pull a smile from her and feel normal again.
The rest of the journey is quiet and somber. Reality weighs heavy on their shoulders, and while each is likely lost in their own introspections there is little in the way of conversation between them. While he is grateful for the company there are parts of Wane that feel guilty for asking so much of his companion and he hopes that even if she doesn’t speak them aloud to him she has her own reasons for coming, too. Maybe she is looking for another memory, another thing to miss once it’s gone.
And so, a few days pass like this, with Wane and Eszka walking in heavy silence and avoiding who they can to keep themselves safe.
When the mountain is finally in view the relief in Wane’s expression is nearly palpable. The continued trek up its rocky, snow-glazed incline isn’t simple but he can see the gathering crowd half-way up the steep slope and it instills in him the motivation to complete the climb. They are not the first to arrive, nor are they the last. A healthy mix of individuals, young and old, are stopped on the incline by a semi-circle of others who Wane doesn’t know but assumes to be the ones calling the shots.
He isn’t wrong.
As he draws near the looks of blatant disapproval on their faces are telling enough, and he watches as at last the crowd settles and one of the horses, as blue-white as ice, slides forward from the half-circle and recites to the awaiting crowd their desperate mission. When he is finished he stomps a single hoof, and proof of his power Wane watches as wings, horns, and other visible traits are plucked from those in the group that had been lucky enough to wield them. He takes a moment then, a crooked grin curling the ends of his mouth upwards, and winks at Eszka as though to remind her that they have lost nothing.
Surely that puts them at an advantage, doesn’t it?
When he looks back at the semi-circle of horses he does his best to learn them, to remember the lines of their faces and the colours of their skin, and eyes, but he turns as they are dismissed and he finds as soon as he does so his recollection of them is lost.
“Please come with, I know the lake! I promise!”
A filly, starving and wretched, calls out from the crowd. She is terribly alone, and her bones jut from her skin here and there in all of the obvious places. He doesn’t know what compels him to her side. They know the way already, at least to Nerine, as they’ve just travelled it. Nevertheless, she beckons and he follows as though it is the only option before them.
He doesn’t know why Eszka decides to humor him in his choice to let a filly lead the way home, only that she does.
And so the duo become a group as they join the little filly and whoever else has decided to follow in her wake. Together they make the treacherous descent down, slipping here and there on the ice covered rocks and watching bits of snow and ice give way and tumble down the mountainside. There is a moment when Wane is following behind Eszka, lost inside his head at the swing of her hips, and he stumbles, teetering dangerously close to the edge of a steep drop. He catches himself, barely, at the last second and vows to pay more attention from here on out.
A lie, because while he will never openly admit it, every time through the remainder of their journey he is distracted walking behind her.
It is, of course, of no surprise that the rogue filly choose to ‘lead’ them through the path they’d initially taken on their way to the mountain. She proclaims it, and loudly, as the best, and when she does Wane is left only to laugh quietly to himself without disagreeing. Here and there she stops to babble, and while her language is not always perfectly sensical, not once does she direct them falsely. Wane himself has never been a fan of children. They had always seemed too unpredictable, too reckless, but he can admit to himself now that he has grown use to the idea of having one around after months of Khuma forcing his ear against the side of their egg to listen to the rhythm of its heartbeat.
Perhaps that’s why he feels himself softening towards the filly.
Perhaps it’s why he’s left with her at all — what she reminds him of, what he stands to gain and lose should this mission go the way he hopes it will.
As the journey progresses, however, he becomes painfully aware of her illness. It isn’t critical yet, not like the walking corpses he and Eszka had seen on the way in, but every so often he watches the coughing rack her feeble body, sees her sprinkling trails of violent red against the snow. It unearths pieces of him that he’s ashamed to admit exist, even to himself — pieces of him that wish then that he hadn’t made the choice to follow her into Nerine, and then the Isle — parts that recognize, a little too easily, that both he and Eszka would be safer without the threat of her disease.
And yet, just like on the mountainside, he cannot leave her.
Perhaps Khuma had unearthed some ancient instinct in him since the arrival of their egg after all.
The expedition continues as the group follows the river upstream and into Hyaline, the flat river banks eventually giving way to red maple and cherry trees whose bare branches reach out into the grey sky like long, gnarled fingers. They cross where the river becomes less violent, braked by the dam of a beaver while made deeper for it. The plunge is shockingly cold, but the wonder in Briella’s eyes when she spies the brown animals with their quilted tails is enough to warm him (albeit only temporarily). Once on the other side, drenched and left even colder, the journey continues only with a break for food as Briella deems fit.
Luckily for Wane, and the rumble in his gut, she is a fair dictator.
Just as the sun is falling down behind the mountain peaks the rag-tag group of misfits finally reaches the glassy, frost-glazed waters of Hyaline’s crystal lake. It’s only logical that they will go no further tonight, not with the daylight alluding them, and despite the fragile filly’s nonsensical chattering throughout the journey thus far she seems to, in all actuality, use a great deal of logic. “Rest!” She proclaims, ever-the-dictator, and with the gentle curl of a smile on his lips he watches her toddle over to the trunk of a towering tree to break the wind while sleep takes her. It’s Wane’s every intention to lay beside her when he can and let the warmth of his body heat her up for what little that it’s worth, but there is time for that yet.
Eszka, without saying a word, without even blinking in his direction, is calling to him now — and he wants to be near her, if even for just a moment before they fall asleep.
So he finds her, and just as the last fragments of light are leaving the wavering reflections of the lake’s crystal surface. What they talk about isn’t earth shattering, just a few light hearted jokes here and there about Briella’s abundant spunk, sprinkled with the inevitable drivel that always comes with small talk. Even still, he can’t help but notice the way her eyes look like the lilac that the sky becomes awash with just as the night creeps in to dilute the colour of the sunset. He doesn’t tell her, but he wants to — opens his mouth even to begin to say something he is bound to regret.
But there’s a rustle in the brush to their left that stops him.
First there is a crack, then a snap. He can hear the break of branches as the bramble only meters from them sways in a gentle locomotion.
But there is nothing gentle about what is coming.
In the next moment it strikes. Only visible a second or two, a pair of hungry, yellowed eyes shine like a beacon in the ever growing darkness, followed then, by the flash of salivating, razor-sharp fangs. It lunges out, arms wide like a desperate lover, towards Wane with an open mouth and outstretched paws that yearn for the feel of flesh beneath their feline claws. His muscles are tightly bound coils, and he springs forward, they both do, fleeing in opposite directions as a pair of starving feline predators decide to announce their dinner time.
Wane can’t say how many of them have leapt forwards, but he knows that there are at least two. Eszka is nowhere to be seen, surely with one of the cats on her heels. For a moment he almost goes back, in fact, arcs his body in a gentle curve around the trunk of red maple, but remembers little Briella still sleeping soundly at the base of her trunk. To go back would be to lead them to her, and he can’t risk having her devoured. She’s too small, too naive. She’s made it too far to be robbed of her victory now. Besides, to see the life drain from her eyes would likely ruin him in a way he wouldn’t come back from.
So, he runs, and never too quickly — just slow enough to let the big cat think that he is still within its grasp. The horrible truth is that maybe he still is within its grasp, because it seems like each of them has been running now for hours and he is growing steadily weaker, and more and more out of breath. Eventually, the chase disintegrates into stalking as both beasts tire, and the two walk in a line with no more than a hundred feet between their bodies at all times. They go on like that until they reach Taiga.
The ancient redwoods spiralling up into a dark, grey sky are a surprisingly welcome sight. The cat has shrunk back into the distance, a fact that Wane is ever grateful for as the thick mist of Taiga creeps in between the trees and masks the path that he walks. He doesn’t know if its left preferring Hyaline country to the redwoods, or if its caught wind of an easier target instead but he hopes Briella is still sleeping soundly at the foot of her tree as it slinks off into the night.
His journey is not made much easier, however, by the predators departure. The night was still everywhere, and the redwoods could be a maze if you didn’t know them well. The path to the mountain Eszka and Wane had covered in the well-lit daytime and had seen no problems. Now is different, disoriented and exhausted from the chase out of Hyaline, Wane isn’t certain what direction he’s travelling. Blindly, he presses on, until a noise in the distance stops him in his tracks.
It’s the distinct crunch of pine needles underfoot, and its headed towards him.
He can feel his heart slam against the walls of his chest, and his stomach as it sinks. He won’t outrun the cat a second time, not when he’s run through the night, not when he is exhausted and unsure of where he’s going — not like this. The fog grows thicker somehow, like it feeds and thrives off his fear. He imagines ten cats or more all closing in behind it, switching their tails to and fro as their shoulder blades roll in perfect symmetry with every step closer that they stalk.
But he’s wrong.
When the fog parts at last it isn’t a cat at all, only Eszka. He laughs aloud at himself as she joins his side and their journey continues. Together they share jokes to ease the tension. They pray out loud for Briella’s safety.
They keep walking, until by some miracle, they make it out of the dark and the redwoods as the sun begins to rise over the beautiful expanse of Nerine. Home.
To be home, however temporarily, is a welcome relief. The pair spend the day in the surf on the coastline, laughing and eating their fill, doing their best to recuperate what little strength is possible before the conclusion of the journey to icicle isle come daybreak. There are a few hours that Wane slips away to seek out Wax in the caves, but doesn’t find her. He wants to tell her about the contagion. He wants to assure her that they will be okay, and that he thinks he knows where Khuma is, but ends up swallowing his secrets and returning to the shore instead.
And when at last, nightfall comes, Wane makes the unwelcomed suggestion that they spend the night in the caves to break the wind. The truth is that he doesn’t want to return to his cave alone, still full of clutter while completely empty all at the same time. For a moment he lets himself wonder if she feels badly about sleeping in the same space as Khuma, but he doesn’t press her. Instead, when she curls up at the mouth of the cave he simply lays beside her.
Skin-to-skin with Eszka he sleeps well for the first time in days.
When first light comes and her eyes finally flutter open he asks her to stay, to not join him on this second leg now that he knows she’s safe again. He begs her: “Please, stay here.”
She refuses.
So, with some awkwardness between them they set out for the shoreline again, trudging dutifully through the snow and sand alike to reach the point they deem to yield the closest gap between the isle and Nerine. It’s a few hours walk, and as they make it Wane thinks on occasion that he can see the faint outline of a trail sliding helter-skelter through the snow; a snake, he thinks. He confirms it, further down, where a piece of shed is waving like a banner tangled in the bark of an evergreen tree. She was here. She was close.
He points the markings out to Eszka, and for a while they forget about their mission and follow the trail.
It leads exactly where they had meant to go, anyways.
Finally, the shoreline is before him, and beyond it the isle. He swings his head so that he can look Eszka in the eyes, a rakish grin parting his lips then.
“Care to join me?” He asks her.
An echo from the past — something for her to remember.
Then, without waiting to hear her response he plunges in, ice giving way beneath his feet.
And it feels like fire; like knives that tear him open again and again and again. The cold, it has him, and instantly — seeping down through his flesh until it finds the marrow in his bones. He has been one with the ocean for all of his existence, but it has never been like this, like the cold is so sharp he can’t breathe.
He swims anyways, sputtering and breathing in water more often than he’d like as the cold makes him clumsy.
He doesn’t wait to see if Eszka is still behind him. The truth is that he would hardly blame her for choosing instead to linger in the crashing surf. As far as he knows there is nothing out there on the island that speaks to her. He had seen a trace of Khuma though, a shred of light in circumstances that felt impossibly dark. He has no choice but to keep going.
But when he reaches the shoreline, drags his frozen, aching body up and out of the surf, shaking the water from his body as he does so, he swings his great head to look across his shoulders and he hopes to see her standing there, too.
And not only because they’ll need each other to warm up.
The rhythm of the sea crashing below is usually enough to quiet her mind. She is accustomed to anxiety and avoids its triggers whenever possible. This means that she is often solitary, lingering on her clifftop where she can be found by those who are truly looking, but never surprised or stumbled upon. Well, almost never. She cannot think about the last time someone had surprised her there, her head is already too full, too loud with threat and worry. She should leave Nerine and go to a sanctuary.
So she picks her way down the cliff, a familiar path but not one to be taken carelessly. Though she sometimes leaps down the last bit to land in the grey sand and race to the water she doesn’t do so today. The surf is roaring, cold, a tumble of sound and dark water. Bull kelp churns shadowy in the glassy swells, serpentine. Her chest heaves and she hesitates on the shore. This is not the best place to leave from, and its then she realizes that she has no intention of going anywhere. As if to test this she charges towards the receding surf (but there, in the motion of throwing herself toward the water, a black memory claws its way up her throat). She whirls, lets the water’s foamy edge chase her back up the dark sand. Again (the memory stays away), and turn, and flee. The rhythm of this play steadies her, draws all her quavering parts back together until she is just breath and motion, dapples on fading black chasing hypnotic waves down the beach.
When Wane comes, the sight of him drawing down the beach towards her takes her out of rhythm a little, though she does not break away to meet him immediately. In her mind he cannot be coming to meet her, though she recalls their last encounter in a hazy warm way that plants a seed of brightness in her even as she frets. Clearly her time spent chasing the waves has not wiped the worry from her features--he sees it--and she wonders what that means, why should the variations of her expression halt his questions about the woman who will be mother to his child? She doesn’t dwell on it in the moment.
Words spill from her with little encouragement then, and she tells him all that she knows about the plague settling over Beqanna. She almost tells him that she is afraid, but that vulnerability is more terrifying than the idea of a pestilence leaving them all as bones and tattered skin on these dusky shores. Instead she asks where he thinks Khuma might have gone, because she is certain his thoughts are with the serpent woman again as her disappearance and others are easily attributed to the sudden threat of illness. Or the illness itself, but this she will not mention. Instead she follows his gaze west, to the distant white isle.
She is about to ask if he will go, and tries to guess if she can make herself follow him, or if he would even want her to.
When the fairies call them, Eszka is watching Wane. She is frozen under the weight of the summons but his eyes draw slowly back to her own and he is not frozen. She knows he is going to turn inland and she cannot let him go alone. Her jaw is pressed to his, a brisk embrace. And then they are turning up the beach and leaving for the mountain.
The scent boundary of Nerine would have turned her back were she alone, she has not left the coastal kingdom since her arrival. They’d crossed the length of the country in no time, familiar paths falling away under their hooves. When she drops back from him, under the guise of sniffing at the boundary to see if anyone else has broken across it ahead of them she instead focuses on the pounding of her heart, trying to urge herself past the hesitation of crossing out of Nerine. Its Wane, drawing away, that calls her beyond it finally. A Nerine where his is not suddenly lacking the safety she had attributed to it.
Side by side, sometimes single file, they pass through the desolate country between Nerine and the mountain. Of course this stretch of Beqanna is mostly forest, but in the light of day and with the mystery of their summons heavy in her thoughts she doesn’t balk when entering the trees.
Seeing the sick for the first time draws her back alongside Wane, where she brushes the side of her face against his broad neck. Sheltering in the closeness of the stallion, filling her lungs with the scent of him, of the sea, instead of the cloying perfume of rot and sickness.
Eszka wants to go quickly, and Wane obliges her, just as eager to reach their destination. The directness of their trip, first through the endless trees of the Taiga, and then up through the mountainous Hyaline, is sometimes impeded by the need to circle around or all together avoid the sick or those who might be. The initial thrill of urging herself beyond Nerine faded following their repeated sightings of the sick. The pair of them are mostly quiet, it serves to avoid drawing attention and also to allow them to wander through their own thoughts. She cannot say for sure why she is going, but the dark thing, sitting quietly in its walled prison could--not that the two of them talk. The dark thing knows about pestilence, she has seen it, caused it, removed it. They might be quarantined from one another but the two of them are still called to the same things. Water and power most frequently, disaster not far behind.
She does consider the possibility that she has seen all of this before. One more dark moment echoing out of the unreachable past.
Wane calls her out of these musings, prevents her spiral into all of the unknowns. He teases her and she finds her smiles come easily for him, her laughter pushing back the Taiga’s fog, and scampering silvery up Hyaline’s frozen slopes. They distract one another when the silence of Beqanna feels too heavy and so they survive the mystery hanging over their heads and arrive at the mountain after their few days travel.
She had seen the mountain from a long way off, kept her eyes on it as it grew larger and larger. But she is certain she senses the very moment that she tresspasses on it’s soil. There is a song she should hear, but doesn’t, the ghosts of its lyrics make her ears flick but there is nothing for her. She is glass, insulated, meaningless, no lightning rod for the magic that lives within these borders.
And so there is nothing for them to take from her that has not already been taken. She stops beside Wane, looking upon the ancient creatures who wait even higher up the mountain. Once she would have known their names (not true names, but what their kind were called and ways to avoid irritating them as mortals are wont to) but now they are a entirely foreign, distant and fierce in their power. She has even forgotten how much she should fear and respect them--even as she fears and respects them. They take from the others all around her things that she can see and things that she cannot and when it is done and their task has been given and the fairies have disappeared and left the grey slope somehow darker she looks around at each of the others. She’d smiled when Wane had winked at her, the two of them sharing a silent pleasure at not having anything excised. Now though, seeing the strangers check for missing wings or close their eyes and search for less tangible gifts, she feels a pang of recognition and sadness, and cannot look anymore.
Most of them were quiet when the cold blue fae addressed them, save for a single child, whose chirruping voice rose up into the thin mountain air. Agnieszka does not see her until she appears ahead of them, the path away from the mountain disappearing behind her. They’d all begun to descend, and some move past the girl without paying her any mind. Eszka is surprised at just how young the child is. Wane is captured, as are others, one of them a pale painted stallion that she does not know. Eszka greets the stranger politely and then the group of them move off, the filly in the lead. Wane knows the way perfectly well, and she herself could retrace their steps without too much trouble but they form a party anyway. She follows the child because Wane does, yes, but also because she cannot let the spirited girl go on this journey alone, even if she knows the way. Had her companion tried to go on seperate from Briella she’d have dragged him right back to keep pace with the child. She is charmed (is she not perpetually charmed by him?) that he elects that they follow the girl before she can say a word.
The trip down the mountain is more difficult than the ascent in many ways. Their hooves slide and stones clatter and tumble away beneath their hooves, the avalanche of detritus cascading into the feet of the horse ahead. Their little band drifts apart some, to avoid tripping each other up. Wane is somewhere behind her, and she keeps an ear turned back for him. Ahead, little Briella is as nimble as a goat--at least compared to the adults who plod too near the soft edges of the trail sometimes. Agnieszka tosses a look over her shoulder at Wane once, hearing him send a spray of loose stone down over the edge. Her violet gaze unamused, chiding him for trying to fall off the mountain when they’ve barely begun their quest.
The wind pulls at their coats, cutting to the skin on the exposed mountainside, whistling in ears and numbing extremities and when at last the lowlands rise up to meet them she cannot help taking a moment to stretch and try to coach some feeling back into her muscles. Their child-leader makes up her mind on a direction rather quickly and they are delving into Hyaline, taking a route that is similar enough to the one that the two Nerinians had tread coming the other direction.
All the effort to avoid the sick and now they are following closely after Briella whose little muzzle drips red, and whose body quickly wastes with illness. Eszka watches her with concern, considers that they have clearly expedited their own infection by choosing to join the girl but the more time she spends roaming through Beqanna the more she understands that they will be unable to avoid exposure to the infection. It is everywhere, she glimpses the hollow eyed and ghostly in Hyaline, and knows why she must get to the isle. She does not wish this plague on anyone. Well, no, she isn’t that altruistic. As long as they can cure it, it might be alright if all of Stillwater’s hair falls out. Though she does not consider him with any such levity.
After a river crossing during which she is grateful to be following a child when it means they don’t hurry to cross a deeper and more difficult place, and a bit of marveling over some funny chesnut rodents, they break for food. She can’t bring herself to graze and roams in a circle , head down, snorting over the sheltered greenery. Her stomach revolts at the thought of the sickness all around, at the imagery of blood dripping into blades of grass. Her companions crop the grass and clover quietly, taking the opportunity to refuel and she decides she is being an idiot. So she eats what she can, quickly, without tasting anything.
At Hyaline’s lake the fading light bids them to rest. The filly chooses a place for herself, the pale Santana remaining nearby. Agnieszka drifts away looking out over the valley of Hyaline, watches a liver chestnut in the distance who stops to watch their group in turn before disappearing into the trees along the river to the south. Hyaline’s residents do not approach them, this is odd and also perhaps a kindness. She is looking out quietly this way when Wane comes to her, and there is an intimacy in the way that they fall together, talking, finding humor where they can to warm one another. When that intimacy appeared between them she isn’t sure. If it were in the water, or on the beach, or someone during the miles of this journey. Does he feel that? She does wonder, especially as she catches him looking at her again like he’s just discovered her. She doesn’t think about her scarred face, or realize how steady she’s been since they left home on this mission, she only feels a moment of silence between them waiting for a touch or a word to settle into it and turn this into something else.
Nature has other plans.
Her attention is rent from Wane, and the two of them shy away almost in unison, a ballet of surging muscle and churning hooves. The cats smell of predator, musk, and pine. The winter has pushed them down looking for food and sickly horses seem easy prey. Perhaps they’ve already taken someone and it’s made them bolder about attacking.The cat that has chosen her leaps at her hind end but she manages to kick away and the animal twists to avoid her flying hooves. Escape is the only thought pulsing through her mind as the cat drives her into the trees to the east and away from Wane, Briella, and the others. She crashes through the underbrush, loud and frantic. The river snakes up ahead and it’s clear the feline means to drive her against it, expecting that she will turn back from the deep fast water, or try to run up the length of it a path that is too winding and varied to facilitate escape.
The decision is made the second she thunders up to the steep embankment. She doesn’t stop, or spin away, or try to turn and fight. She is long limbed, and strong, not as heavy bodied as she could be considering her lineage and the leap is a long and fluid flight that could have sailed her over most any obstacle. Except this one. When the tobiano mare lands in the riverbed, a few strides from the opposite edge her front legs slide away on the slick round stones and her body splashes down hard in the freezing water. The breath is torn from her chest by the impact, and Agnieszka squeals in fear and frustration as she flounders to her feet stumbles up the bank. Wild eyed she looks back towards the opposite bank where the large feline stares at her, trying to gauge her injury. It is not inclined to try and cross here and dashes south along the river, as if it knows a place where it can cross and come after her. There is no time to wait for it, and Wane will turn North toward home if he loses his pursuer. Cold and aching, she sobs a pained breath hoping he has escaped.
Little known to her Wane runs a lot longer before he loses his pursuer. Agnieszka runs until she reaches the north side of the lake and then trots along its edge in the dark. They are lucky that the animals were expecting them to be sick and weak, she can run much longer than the cat can and it seems to have given up on her. In the dark she cannot see the others across the lake and will not go back to the southeast side to try and find them, it is too dangerous to backtrack and risk running into the predators or leading them back to the small Briella. Coming to the river she follows it north until she finds a place to cross into the redwoods.
The cold and wet hasn’t left her since the fall into the river after her jump. Splashing through another river is not something she relishes but its dark and she is tired and no one is going to cross this much cold water to try and eat her. She laughs darkly to herself as she shakes herself on the muddy taiga shore, well there is one creature that would. So much for not thinking of him with levity.
Taiga is a maze, a forest going on and on into the dark. Visibility (or what visibility there is) is cut down further by the the fog that rolls among the trunks and leaves her guessing with every step. Her time beneath the trees, until now, has been in Wane’s company, or spent in a live-or-die flight. She stops walking. Her heart, finally having slowed after her flight, begins to beat a different cadence, and the fear that accompanies its bird-in-a-cage beat is quite unlike the pounding that came with fleeing from a hungry cat. She has all but forgotten this terror, the way the trees press in as though they are not trees. In her nightmares they are not trees, but blurs of other things, like a memory that her brain feels but refuses to unearth.
But home is on the other side of these trees, and Wane too, he must be.
Some mercy turns the wind her way, bringing her first the distance sharpness of salt water beneath all the redwood needles and damp. Moving again is difficult, and she urges herself to the swiftest pace she can maintain until she gets to Nerine, guessing at north and willing herself to be blind to the passing trees, deaf to the creaking echoes in the dark. What monsters those trees were made of would not come out so long as she did not slow or look too long at them.
The night grows colder, the fog more dense and she plunges on, starting to flag..she has misjudged her pace and she has no idea how much further she has to go. Only the effort of racing through the Taiga toward the scent of the sea keeps her from mad panic, and even that is tenuous. When she pushes through the fog toward an indistinct shape--suddenly there in the dark--that turns out to be a rich bay colored stallion she startles and skids to a stop in the needles and mud. His laughter is so welcome a sound, chasing the night and her terrors back and back. Her own laughter comes out choked at first, but relief makes her eyes water. She slides up alongside him, and when they get their bearings they fall into step, no longer lost in the fog but headed toward Nerine at a much more acceptable pace than the one that had brought her to him.
They talk about escapes. Wane’s cat is a lot bigger in the retelling, and she humors him with a sarcasm that he calls her out on. She asks about the others, he doesn’t know any more than she does and they hope for the best with a solemnity that carries on through the night.
Morning and Nerine arrive simultaneously and they make a decision to rest after their individual flights yesterday. They had sped along towards home and tired themselves. Perhaps each of them needs a chance to recover from the things they have seen and the dark thoughts summoned up by dark times. When he goes off alone, she guesses to look for his returned sister, Agnieszka stands on the shore looking towards the distant shape of the isle. Their journey thus far has been hard, but she shifts uncomfortably under a feeling of foreboding. There will be more difficult tasks ahead...or so they should expect.
Nightfall comes too soon, and sleep begins tugging at her relentlessly. She climbs up the beach with Wane and he suggests that they bed down in his cave. Despite days of pushing through her fear and anxiety she cannot sleep in a cave, and even if she could she would be horrified for Wane to witness her night terrors. She turns her ears back, tension racing through her muscles and flatly refuses the invitation. Guilt immediately follows and she looks up towards the cliffs and considers suggesting they retreat to her rocky shelter above the waves. Only then, the idea of going back there with him calls up shameful memories of another night and another man on those cliffs.
So she compromises and chooses a place to lie down near the sheltering mouth of the cave. He doesn’t go in either, but lays down beside her. Before she closes her violet eyes she looks back and again wonders when this happened, but her sleep, dreamless and deep, takes her before she can overthink it.
In the morning he irritates her for the first time (probably not the last) when he asks her to stay. Pleads with her to remain safe in Nerine. Her refusal is blunt and she walks away from him with an indignant switch of her tail, heading north and denying him any further opportunity to be sentimental. Her temper fades and soon they are talking and walking together again. When he discovers Khuma’s trail she joins him in tracing it, the two of them murmuring over the ripples in the snow, calling out to one another as the lose and find it again.
The trail is lost to the sea when they clatter down a beach that is rockier than the one they frequent. There is no doubt where his snake-woman has gone. She knows he is worried, but she trusts him to remain focused on their task, though she hopes they can discover that Khuma and the egg made it to that distant frozen shore quickly, for Wane’s sake.
Care to join me? He asks, that crooked grin making her heart thump as he calls her back to that warm day in the surf. Here they are then, and she isn’t wondering how they arrived.
Agnieszka plunges into the water, through the icy gap he had broken. The cold claws of winter sinking into her flesh, reaching and reaching for the warmth that Wane had left blooming in her chest. The water is not still and the swells try to cover her head and smother her. She cannot see the white shore or make out her companion as she struggles to keep her head up and find her stroke.
It is impossible to avoid going under but when it happens she kicks hard for the surface and continues, blowing saltwater out of her nostrils with harsh snorts followed by hard breathing before the sea tries to drag her down again. These moments repeated again and again are what get her across the channel. She keeps kicking even when she cant feel her legs anymore, forces her head up even though she thinks she’s keeping it up as high as she can
She is shocked when her hooves touch bottom and she stumbles, coughing and shivering up the beach. The current has pushed her south and she has not landed where she’d expected. It is not the first time she wishes she were a stronger swimmer. Her voice is strangled but she calls out to Wane and picks her way higher up the beach, dripping and shivering. She’s made it, but they are separated again.
Leander had hesitated at first. It wasn’t just that he was sick. It wasn’t just the wracking cough, the searing fever, the weakness that had quickly sewn itself into the marrow of his bones. It was more than that. The failure of his last venture to the Mountain yet remained at the forefront of many thoughts, and in his current state he had to wonder if he would truly be of any help. He had been of so little help then; what could he possibly contribute now, like this?
Still, he came.
It was slow going for the palomino overo – too weak to fly, he made the journey by foot, his lungs gripped hard by the sickness. Yet once he’d made up his mind, he pressed on – for beneath the illness and beyond his hesitation, Leander remained a man of good intentions. No matter how small a chance there was that he would be of any use, if he could help his parents’ homeland recover and spare whatever family he had left from this plague, he would.
He arrived late, working to catch his breath. He lingered at the outskirts of the gathering, wheezing harshly even as he strained to concentrate on the given instructions. At the disappearance of his wings, he cringed. To him, the loss of their lifelong weight was equal to the loss of any other limb – to him, it felt devastating. Despite the absence of actual injury, the phantom sensation along his shoulders where the appendages had been was more painful than he could have imagined. He had to bite back a sharp outcry – and instead he was overtaken by a coughing spell that left him feeling dizzy and faint.
When he had finally recovered enough to look about himself blearily, he realized that the majority of those who had gathered had already dispersed. He would have sighed, except for the fact that he needed to save whatever breath he could for the voyage ahead. Though it was winter in the lands, his body quickly became slick with sweat, and his wingless shoulders ached fiercely. To distract himself as he trudged deliberately northward through drifts of snow, he thought of his parents.
He thought of the place beyond Beqanna where he had been raised. Once, as a young boy, his father had taken him to a cliffside that stretched across the horizon, as far as the eye could see. Leander had been significantly less coordinated as a youth. Long-limbed and ungainly, his wings too broad for shoulders that were as-of-yet childishly reedy, he’d been having trouble controlling his flight. After one too many bruises from failed liftoffs and crash-landings, the splashed colt had begun to turn away from any attempts at flying in favor of the relative safety of the ground.
Always the teacher, Riagan had noticed his son’s deflation and self-defeat – and so he brought Leander to the highest place he could find. Gently, he had nosed him to the cliff’s edge. ‘Look out there,’ he’d said, ‘See the eagles?’ Leander had nodded, eyeing the tiny figures soaring in the distant sky. ‘They aren’t fighting the wind, are they, son?’ His dad had touched the blonde fuzz that was his mane as he continued. ‘I know it feels like you don’t have control. Your sister, Rhy, often felt the same way with her gift. It’s okay to be scared, Lee – but what if you’re fighting it too hard?’
Leander had looked up at him, tight-lipped, worried; but the kindness in Riagan’s brown eyes had been so reassuring. ‘Maybe instead of letting fear take over, you could let your wings find their own way through the wind.’ His father’s smile on that cliffside was etched in his memories, and Leander could remember his next words so clearly. ‘I believe in you,’ Riagan had murmured, ‘You can do this.’ And with his father’s belief bolstering his resolve, the boy had leapt from the precipice with wings outstretched to the vast beyond.
At first he’d plunged. He remembered the sinking feeling in his stomach as he fell through more sky than he’d ever known, wings akilter as they scrambled to catch hold of the air, his heartbeat pounding in his ears. But then – oh, then! The gangly colt could hear his dad’s voice replaying in his mind, and all of a sudden he’d stopped fighting the fall. And when Leander’s wings had shaped the wind to lift him up – when he finally rose to the cliff’s edge with sudden effortlessness – his dad’s proud burst of laughter rang out so clearly that he could almost hear it still.
It’s the sound he thought of now.
And it’s the sound that kept him going.
Leander wasn’t sure how long it took him to reach Nerine’s northern shoreline. Between coughing spells and periods of rest, he had followed the many hoofprints that had formed a path here. The waters were dark, the waves rough as they unfurled and struck upon cold sands. He could see a few figures, far out from the shore. He watched them bob in the turbulent seas as they swam to their collective destination –and it reminded him of the eagles.
So again, he plunged.
The frigid water stole whatever reserve of breath he’d had left. He gasped wordlessly, the icy chill sinking into him like daggers. In his weakened state, his teeth quickly began to chatter, though his limbs struck wildly against the currents as he made for the opposite shore. It wasn’t long before his head dipped below the surface once, twice; or was it more than that? He choked, coughed, spluttered. Too soon, it felt like he was swallowing more water than air. For a moment, his heartbeat pounded in his ears.
But then –
Oh, then.
He thought of the cliff’s edge. The sound of his father’s laughter. What if you’re fighting it too hard?
His limbs stilled as he forced himself to inhale, sharp and clear, before the exhale that would relinquish his control. He stopped fighting so hard. Instead, he focused on his breathing – working only to stay afloat – and waited for the currents to carry him into the vast beyond. The dark waters swept him along like driftwood as he shuddered with the cold, the hairs on his muzzle tipped with frost as he concentrated on keeping his face above the water. It was no doubt still a struggle; but in the end, it was the waves that brought him to the Isle.
When his hooves finally found purchase beneath the surface once more, he could barely hold his weight as he pressed toward the icy shoreline. Emerging from the ocean’s tide, his frozen limbs felt impossibly feeble, and the wetness of his mane and tail crystallized all too quickly. Leander shivered uncontrollably, coughing – and as he made his way up the beach, a sudden faint spell caused him to stumble. He only just caught himself, feeling breathless and cold beyond compare. Yet the now-wingless stallion persisted, blinking hard against the frost to look about himself and gain his bearings, his mouth parted wide for his lungs to drag in as much air as the sickness would allow.
leander
take a bullet to the heart just to keep you safe; like a dream in my arms but i’m wide awake
So let your heart, sweet heart Be your compass when you're lost
She had awakened into the nightmare not long ago.
The sweet slumber she had slept in the last years had quickly crumbled away when she was greeted by the chaos. Her dreams were forgotten, destroyed by the destruction that erupted around her when she stepped out of her haven within the meadow. Many of them ran, screaming about a disease that was spreading and choking all Beqanna.
A plague.
Madelyn had heard the story. The reasons why the epidemic came and shook the very core of her homeland. It made her sad when she heard what had happened. The thought of what the plague would due to those within Beqanna teared her apart. Some would live, some would die. Friends and family would be torn apart. She couldn’t bear those thoughts. No one deserved to live a life that was plagued with darkness and sorrow.
It was her duty to help them. To rid this plague away from Beqanna. So, she answers the calls of the faeries within the mountain.
The buckskin mare is one of the last ones to arrive. She does not push herself forward to the front, but finds a place within the back of the crowd. Carefully, Madelyn allows her hazel eyes to take in the scenery she sees past the crowd of heads. The faeries stand in a half-circle facing them. Their expressions make it clear they are not happy with the turn of events within Beqanna. She can agree with them on that—she was not happy to hear the news of what has happened either. Beqanna didn’t deserve to be infected with the plague that it was in now.
Eventually, one of the faeries comes forward. He reminds her of a land long ago, before the past kingdoms fell away. A land of winter wonders, but only the strong could ever survive there. He had the demeanor of the icy tundra by the way he looks too. When the fairy speaks, she listens carefully to each of his words.
So, they would go to Icicle Isle. One of the new lands that would help break the darkness that was currently spreading across Beqanna. Apparently, a piece of the cure for the plague was there—frozen stems from a heart-shaped pond. Then he is gone with the other faeries in a blink of an eye.
The journey would not be easy, but she accepts the quest with a full-heart and whatever challenges may come her way. She may not have her gifts that were previously bestowed upon her, but Madelyn does not fret over that. For the most of her life she had lived without such abilities and traits. It would not hinder her journey to Icicle Isle.
Madelyn does not hesitate to make her way towards the Icicle Isle. It seems neither do others as those who accept the quest also head down the mountain too. While making her way down the mountain, Madelyn knows she must plan for the journey she will take. The route is somewhat familiar to her, but with the changes she isn’t sure how much the land of Beqanna has shifted. She decides it would be best to make her way around Hyaline to the west. She will likely find a path along the Loess border and through the heart of Taiga and close to Nerine to reach Icicle Isle. It was the best plan she could come up with, especially since winter brewed across Beqanna now.
She makes her way across the abandoned lands of Beqanna. Sometimes she is trotting or cantering on her journey there. Loess is a kingdom Madelyn does not entirely investigate since she makes her way through the kingdom on the eastern border, close to the mountain range that protects Hyaline.
The buckskin mare meets several others on her journey through Loess towards Taiga. Some of them are making their way to safe havens. Some of them are already infected by the plague. She can hear and see the symptoms of the plague on them. Her heart clenches at the thought of the others being sick. Part of her wants to stop and help them find a safe place to for shelter and someone to heal them, but she knows she cannot stop. She must continue her journey towards the northern isle to rid this plague from Beqanna.
Eventually, she reaches Taiga. It has always been an empty land from what she has known. The silence of the ancient redwoods is haunting, it almost scares her away. However, she pushes through the silent forest until she reaches the border between Taiga and Nerine. Madelyn follows the edge of the western shore of Nerine until the land pushes out into the ocean further.
A white land within the distance is barely seen as she reaches the edge of the land. Icicle Isle was just within the horizon of where she stood on the wintery shores of Nerine. It gave her more hope now that she has finally seen the safe haven the faeries brought in order to combat the plague.
But how was she going to get across?
Madelyn studies the body of water that is between her and the frozen island. The water is still, almost too still. As if the ocean itself does not have life within it anymore. But she knows there is still life within it. There are dangers within the water, and that is something she must keep in mind.
The girl then decides to put one hoof into the water. It’s cold, forcing her to pull her hoof out immediately. Madelyn didn’t really like that. No one would, she decides. However, the wintery ocean does not stop her there.
She takes a deep breath and makes her way into the water.
Madelyn carefully paces herself as she swims across the ocean towards the island. Sometimes she is swimming at a faster pace to gain greater distance between her and the frozen land. Other times she is treading water to gain her energy back. Treading the water also helps keep her warm within the cold water.
The closer she gets to Icicle Isle, the more colder the water becomes. At this point she should be shivering to death, but Madelyn doesn’t let herself fall into the ocean and let it take her as a victim. She is determined to reach the snowy shores of the island.
Within time, she reaches closer to the shore of the island. Madelyn paddles faster, each of her limbs force the water around her to propel her quickly and closer to the shore. Each thrust of her limbs is made with determination. A determination she is not sure she has ever had before until now.
Madelyn’s hooves are finally met with stiff ground. It brings a sweet, wild smile to her face. It spreads from ear to ear as she moves quickly from the frozen water onto the shore.
Golden eyes watching our every move Losing time without the sun or moon
I will find her, he’d promised. And so he is. He has safely collected the remaining of his siblings, leaving them on the island in the embrace of his family. Now, for the child his sister had been so determined to find.
It is not easy locating someone he knows nearly nothing about. He is worn by the time he lands on the mountain, a cough rattling faintly in his chest. It seems he had caught the mysterious illness invading these lands, but he hasn’t the time to consider those implications just now.
He can rest as soon as he finishes this one last thing.
Finally, he parts the shadowy veil to find a figure as Heartfire had shown, a small and almost fragile child. But he hasn’t the time to even speak her name. The fairies had called and it is clear she answers. Perhaps he can get to her before things become too tangled. When one fairy steps forward and begins to speak however, he knows it is too late.
His yellow gaze shifts to the crystalline being as he speaks, giving instruction on how this plague might be defeated. He should have left, but he finds himself drawn in against his better judgement. Find the heart-shaped pond and bring a frozen stem of water. A simple enough task for a creature like he. He could have Briella home to his sister in no time at all. And Ether, the boy who has never done anything spectacular in his life, could play an integral role in making his home whole once more.
But of course, there is a catch. There always is. And by the time Ether realizes it, it is far too late.
As his gifts bleed from him, Ether can only stare in surprise. The blackness of shadow melts from his skin, leaving soft blue and white in its place. His teeth dull as the yellow of his eye is replaced by warm brown. He is left just a boy once more, no shadows to protect him. The plague is more evident now in the faint protrusion of his ribs and the patchiness of his roan coat. His lungs rattle as he breathes, and he can only hope he’ll have the strength to do what he must.
It takes him a moment to regain his bearings, and when he recalls what he had been sent for, he turns his gaze swiftly to find the child. After a moment of frantic searching, he finally finds her beginning her descent from the mountain as she urges any who might listen to follow her.
He lurches forward into a lope, catching her quickly enough. “Briella?” he asks softly. He is sure she must be who he had sought, but he needs her to know him too. “I’m Ether.” He pauses, eyeing her uncertainly, hopefully. “Heartfire asked me to find you.”
She might not know him, but he would protect her regardless. It seems he had inadvertently signed on for more than he had bargained, but he is not one to renege on his word.
There are three others that follow her as well, but they are less his concern than the little chestnut filly. So long as they offered her no harm, they could make the journey together. He remains close to her side as they travel down the mountain towards Hyaline, his task settling heavily on his blue shoulders. For someone who had so long hidden from the world, it seems he is now destined to see a great deal of it.
The light no longer burns his skin as it once had, but instinctively he tries to cling to the shadows, finding comfort in them even if they had been stripped from his bones.
He cannot consider that loss now though.
The child seems quite certain as to where she is headed, and Ether is inclined to let her lead. She is the reason he is here, after all. She is a talkative young girl, and he listens silently, not minding her chatter in the least. It reminds him of the way the shadows used to whisper to him.
Occasionally a rumbling cough rattles his lungs, reminding him of their task. Of what had inspired them to make this journey. That cough propels him forward as much as his promise does. Though he hadn’t plan on it, he has been tasked with finding a piece of the cure. And his own body now tells him how much this cure is needed. For everyone.
Perhaps for the first time in his life, he has a purpose far greater than himself. It is a novel experience, to know one’s own actions might be remembered in a time of need.
They trek through craigy hills and past icy streams, along the lake that marks Hyaline special. Here the chestnut filly proclaims they rest, and Ether does not argue. She settles into the hollow beneath a tree, and the blue and white stallion curls up beside her. He does not sleep long, however. Instead he lays awake, watching. Waiting.
The gold and white stallion remains nearby, having kept their company for the journey thus far. So too had a red stallion with a silvery mane and a dapple and white mare, but as they settle down to rest, the pair of them disappear. He barely notices their absence until the sound of a scuffle in the distance draws his attention.
He quickly pulls himself to his feet, and while his imagination runs rampant over those faint sounds, he does not leave his post. He could not leave Briella alone and vulnerable. He is distracted then by the filly thrashing in her sleep, caught in the throws of a nightmare. He nudges her gently, attempting to stir her from slumber. When she awakens with a cry, he flinches in surprise. Her entire body trembles from the dream (and no doubt from the chill), and so he curls up next to her once more, sharing his warmth. He is not good at offering comfort, a skill he has never needed to practice, but he remains close, offering what support he may as tears drip from her face and she stammers her apologies. “They won’t leave you,” he promises in a soft whisper, not knowing quite what else to say. He does not know Dovev well, but he would like to think he knows his sister well enough to know she would never willingly abandon a child.
When finally her emotions seem to have settled, they continue their journey. The two who had disappeared into the night have yet to return, leaving just the three of them to make their way through Taiga. Briella speaks of spirits in the forest, and Ether peers around them in mild curiosity. He has dwelled in enough shadows to know spirits were few and far between. Perhaps she had seen the creatures like him. The shadow dwellers and the silent watchers.
When finally they reach Nerine, night is nearly upon them once more. There they pause to rest once more, Ether remaining close throughout the night as he had before. Nothing appears to disturb this night, leaving their small band intact. Even the nightmares seem to be held at bay.
As they continue their journey the next morning, the weight of their mission settles more heavily upon Ether’s thin shoulders. He can feel his strength flagging, unused the the vulnerable body of the blue and white stallion. When the shadows had swallowed him, they had stripped of his need for sustenance, granting him strength and magic. Now he has none of that, and though his body does not hunger, it grows weak with lack of food. When he had realized his dilemma, he had forced himself to eat what he could, but after several bites he could stomach no more. It seems eating has become as foreign to his body as light to his skin. And that truth shows in the way his ribs have begun to push against his skin, the way his spine seems protrude more prominently with each passing day.
Still, it is not far now, he thinks. He can do this.
Soon they reach the frosty shores of northern Nerine, and in the distance across that narrow channel he can just see the chilly white shores of Icicle Isle. Their destination. Briella does not hesitate in splashing into the waves, and so neither does he. He attempts the keep as close as possible to the filly, unwilling to lose her to these icy waters. Their remaining companion had bade them luck and forged his own path into the water, and it seems they had been separated by the waves. Now it is only the two of them against a vast sea and the creatures she harbors within.
The beast that bumps them in their passage startles him badly, and he pins his ears flat against his skull. The spotted seal seems far more interested in the child, and Ether frantically tries to conceive a way in which he might defend her with waves battering him and numbing his very bones. But rather than attacking, the creature presents her with an array battered penguins.
But they cannot linger in this frigid water. His muscles have begun to seize, his lungs struggling to draw breath against the pervasive cough. He cannot imagine that her tiny, too thin form is equipped to handle this better than his. And so they struggle onwards, him ever on her heels. Until, finally, his feet find purchase beneath the waves and he is pulling himself, shaking and trembling, onto the snow and ice-encrusted shore.
The call is jarring: not a noise or a sight but a gate ripping open in Litotes’ mind. The cold Hyaline wind tugs furiously at his skin as he lurches upward from his sleep, eyes still half-closed and groggy. A brittle cough rattles his frame and echoes through the cave that spreads behind him. Slowly, painfully, and begrudgingly he opens his crusted eyes.
Hyaline spreads cruelly before him. What once kept him alive now traps him: Lie cannot (will not) leave the land and infect others. His duty to Solace and Kagerus is the only weight he can bear. Truthfully, that is almost too much for him, because those who are not ill may become ill when he redirects them. His guilt is ugly, but his drive is perpetual even in its weakest moments.
Today, Litotes is fragile in body and mind but he is not defeated (not yet, perhaps never).
The gate in his mind now has howling wind whipping and screeching through its blackened pathway. The path is all he can think about: the dark singing of the wind as it pushes his legs stumbling forward; and that is just what is doing, he realizes, stumbling forward in such a manner that it appears he is being forced. Lie violently shakes his head, his thick mane slapping his neck and completely covering his eyes. The tickling of his hair brings him back to reality: the sun slowly rising, the melancholy singing of winter birds, and the seemingly constant blanket of snow.
Lie stops, turns his head around to stare solemnly back at the cave he has been sheltering in. He allows himself one thought before pressing onward:
Will he forever be dragged to his destiny? Will he succumb to his selfish pain always?
The trip to the Mountain is short. Hyaline borders the steep slope, one that Litotes has been avoiding since Warlight first welcomed him. At the base, he stops and stares at the climb ahead. In his hesitation, he convinces himself to turn back. With a sigh and an exhausted drop his skull, the cremello turns and begins to trudge away.
Not even five seconds into his defeat, a tiny and angrily mewling kitten slams full force into the stallion’s drooping head. He rears his head back, whinnying and stomping harmlessly at the cat. Lie’s companion screeches and hops about, swatting in a truly feline fashion at his legs. When the two finally settle down, Rune (what his familiar had demanded to be called) glares defiantly up at him.
“I may be small but I’m not letting you turn around. This is your duty, Lie. You’d never forgive yourself if you didn’t go and I don’t want to listen to you mope about this for the next three months,” the irritated, feminine projection echoes in his mind, a trick the kit had mastered to get her point across.
“Plus, this may give some insight to the, ya know, lion thing,” and with that last jab, Rune rolls her eyes and plops down. Lie drops to his knees and allows the sand cat to nest into his shoulders. Admittedly, the warmth of the sassy beast brings him comfort. When Rune senses the stallion’s relief, she begins to purr and projects her satisfaction.
When the two arrive, there is already a crowd milling about. Lie observes the called as they come, perking up when Solace and Kagerus arrive, and finally settling into the shared comfort of Rune. He recognizes almost no one - that coupled with the mystical and disappointed presences of the fairies makes him uneasy.
A fairy steps forward, icy in appearance and personality. Both Rune and Lie quit their mild bickering and peer nervously ahead. His speech is short, cold, and to the point: go to the pond no matter the cost, begin to stitch the wound your actions created. The stallion sighs, begins to recluse into his thoughts yet again when the fairy’s last words hit him. Rune fits in be safe, before their connection is rendered useless.
The wall is up - Lie feels naked and cold, now feverous and frightened without the only company he has held these last few weeks. Rune disappears into the crowd of shuffling horses, her tail quickly vanishing from sight. The only good coming from this is the complete and utter lack of the lion-shifting he is still scared of.
The mass spreads about, each finding their own path to take. Litotes decides he will travel through Hyaline, knowing that he needs to go north and almost nothing else.
Familiar terrain cradles the stallion’s feeble stability. He knows the trip will become treacherous having never travelled to Taiga, Nerine, or the Isle. As Hyaline passes, so does her snow, mountains, and lake. Already Lie misses Rune, remembering a new memory of her as each landmark passes. The lake is the hardest for Kensa’s liver chestnut body running through its depths stretches right before his eyes. He almost runs to her, the memory so visceral that she is just - right - there; but he does not stray. No matter the call of Kensa’s sweet embrace, no matter the haunting images of his father, no matter - no matter - no matter.
He must press on.
Next is the tiniest strip of Taiga: Lie chose to travel through the heart of Hyaline and along Beqanna’s eastern-most shoreline. Luckily, because his time in Taiga is short, he is mostly able to sense his way through the impossibly tall and wide redwoods. Though the cremello wants to make his trip as quick as possible, he knows he must rest here, for Hyaline’s cold winter is no forgiving mistress.
The redwoods are reliable and kind, with bark that does not bother the skin while one rests against it. And that is just what Litotes is doing: leaning wholeheartedly into the tree, eyes closed and breathe heaving. A few coughs ring out as the fever washes over his body, sending ripple after ripple of freezing goosebumps across his flesh. He thinks he may die here, burnt out and foolish in a land completely foreign.
Litotes collapses, muzzle buried in the fragrant pine needles. He will not die here, but he will not go on.
As he is lying there, limp and sweaty, he remembers - remembers the way his father gave up as flames licked and spread around him, remembers the way his mother screamed when his father refused to move, remembers both of their ashy skeletons and the jarring lack of his brother. He remembers the smell, the taste, the salt of his tears, and suddenly he knows the fate of Beqanna if he does not try. He knows the weight of his guilt, the nagging of Rune, the danger to his loved ones.
He must be better; he swore he would be better.
Like saplings swaying in a tornado, Lie’s legs stretch and struggle to push his weight up again. He leans against the tree, just for a second, before breaking into an unbalanced trot. It does not take long to find Nerine, the border reeking of brine and hardy equines. As the trees thin out, the cliff-lined land spreads before him, and he decides to walk along the angry ocean. Once or twice he peers to the frothy and ravenous water below, but the sight combined with his fever makes him dizzy, and he does not want the thought of the swim through frigid waters to turn him way.
Finally, the dangerous path to the beach below is in sight. The lion-man slows to walk and picks his way carefully (as carefully as a plague-ridden man can) to the shore. Here, he stops and studies the water through hazy eyes. To him, it is furious but not unwelcoming, for the water has been his friend since his family died by fire. With a deep breathe and a casting away of his engulfing thoughts, Lie steps foot into the depths.
One after the other, delicate and tired step after step - the water is cold but that is nothing to him (his body had gone numb from fever long ago). The sandy bottom gives way to absolutely nothing. Litotes continues to pump his legs, closing his eyes and focusing on levelling his already weak breathing. Here and there, the water splashes over his head and he thinks he may drown, but always he finds a reserve to surface - whether it be his mother’s slowly fading cries or the idea of Kensa weakened by the plague.
An end is in sight: the shifter’s hooves begin to scrape away at the moldable floor. The ground becomes reliable beneath him - here he must stop and breathe, water-induced coughs turning into plague-induced coughs that leave him heaving. Finally, finally, he drags his body through the shallows, barely able to hold his head up. Lie stands in the sand, mane and tail heavy with water. The callous wind of the Isle shakes his whole frame, and a faint cough rings from his lips.
i don't want your pity, i just want somebody near me guess i'm a coward, i just want to feel all right
She should have left when her children had. But Castle's parting words had stalled her, anchored her to the earth as she watched his abrupt departure. With uplifted eyes, she had lingered a moment too long. Velk and Valdis slipped off in the direction of Silver Cove, and she had trusted them to do as she said, to seek safety within the herd where they could re-group and decide what was to be done. But all three of her loved ones had defied her when she was trying as hard as she could to keep their world from unraveling. But the worst part was they had done so silently. They left her standing alone in an empty kingdom, believing she still had some authority.
Another pass over the mountains had confirmed that the land had been evacuated and Solace had returned to the warmth and comfort of her wife's side. It wasn't long before soothing words and a draft of Kagerus' magic had lulled Solace into a peaceful, regenerative sleep.
But morning's light had reviled that her son and daughter had never returned to Silver Cove. But now in the final stages of her pregnancy, Solace had been forced to wait. Days passed in discomfort and ignorance, and as soon as she was able Solace had left her newborn son in the care of Velk to take to the sky.
The hours stretch on as she flies, seemingly aimlessly, above the common lands and Hyaline in search of her missing offspring. Each movement below her causes her head to snap in it's direction, false hope ignited over and over again. She is just about to tun back, to accept that her (not quite) grown children just don't want to be found, when her thoughts are interrupted by an unfamiliar voice in her own head.
As the fae calls, Solace knows she doesn't have another option. Banking left, Hyaline's Caretaker readjusts her rout to make for the looming mountain to the south.
Her heart is heavy as she soars, but her pink lips are pressed into a grim line. Others have beat her to the meeting, and the large number of responders gives her hope for a cure. But then she sees Valdis, and her mouth goes dry. Her oldest daughter stands before the magickers with laser-like focus. A spark of pride flares in her breast, a contrast to the foreboding she can't shake and the icy wind which whips around them here in this sacred place.
But Kagerus is also there, and Solace is quick to tuck herself alongside her mate after a silent yet affectionate kiss. Her cerulean gaze, attentive yet wary, turns to the demi-gods before there is a chance to speak. Solace holds her head high, poised yet humbled by the power encompassed by the half-circle of beings before them. A gasp escapes her lips as they receive a small sample of that power, stripped of their traits in an instant. She is sharply reminded that when playing with gods, her immortality was little protection.
But the only other option was passivity - helplessness. With the plague spreading like wildfire, she had to trust Beqannas' guardians. It was only a matter of time before the sickness touched her own family and she wouldn't standby while that happened.
The pale queen's shoulders are light and her stride is springy as they set out on the fairies quest. She stays close to Kagerus' flank as they travel across the familiar territory, and even closer in the unfamiliar mists of Tagia. The residual magic from the tragedy causes the corners of her moth to turn down, and an uncomfortable prickle to set her hairs standing on-end. But the endless trotting is tranquil precursor to what she knows is coming, and the gold-splashed mare finds the miles melt away as her mind wanders.
But her internal musings are put to a stop too soon. A brisk winter wind rips her tri-colored forelock away from her bow, and she returns to the present as the land disappears under choppy, grey waters. Kagerus surges ahead, always fearless when she needed to be, and Solace follows her example as best she can.
With quick, small breaths Solace slides into the icy water. The Lake of Hyaline was poor practice for the arctic waters of this channel, swift and freezing they pull at her numbing legs with terrifying strength. She lets the current guide her, making for the shore at an angle. As Solace reaches the shore her step is stiff and her neck rigid, but she pushes through the tension in her joints to trot forward. Warm blood rushes from her core into her limbs, and she can only hope the fairies won't leave them standing here for long.
With a sake of her crest, Solace circles back to Kagerus, seeking to press her side to that of her wife's before looking across the sea of strangers for Valdis.
S
olace
we're reeling through an endless fall we are the ever-living ghost of what once was
He doesn’t think it (not yet). He can’t know that his blood had helped to create this contagion, had helped bring upon the plague. He can’t know that his sire had been resurrected only to serve the whims of their dark god. He doesn’t know that Ramiel had raised Pangea by spilling the blood they share, that he had, in turn, spilled the blood of an innocent to release the sickness on that same damned soil. These dark truths remain a secret to both father and son.
For now.
Sabrael’s not thinking of his stormcloud sire now, as he paces the length of beach of Island Resort. He’s thinking of the woman who had just departed their safe haven without a word of reasoning. The woman he’s only just found again, after years spent searching for any signs of her on Ischia.
~
He had been searching for anyone, really, anyone he ever cared about in the aimless years of his youth. He finds his family – or some semblance of it, anyway, with the vast majority gone or missing – but not where they were supposed to be. Ischia is sick, he learns, along with almost all of the other kingdoms he’d known as a boy. Beqanna is sick, he learns, too; almost nowhere is safe now. So this is where they had landed, their little safety net on another island. Not Their Island, but paradise all the same. He is comforted by the sway of palm trees and warm, briny air on his neck. Sometimes, he closes his eyes and thinks he can hear his mother’s voice soft against the crash of surf. But when he opens them, she’s never there.
~
There’s a nagging sound in his head that grows as he watches Wallace retreat further into the sea. He mistakes it for worry at first, but soon realizes the source is outside of himself. Wonderful, now you’re officially going mad, he thinks to himself, shaking his angular head. But no, it really is there. It beckons him out into the sea, too, pulls him far and away. So away he goes.
The second he hits the warm water, the dragon-shifter becomes merely a horse. He feels it in his core the very moment the beast’s flame sputters and dies within him. It takes his breath away. For once, he is alone. For the first time in his life, there is no other soul clamoring for space inside the same body. His skin feels loose, even, draped generously over his bones. Sabrael cuts through the water feeling lighter than ever. When he reaches land (the soft sand giving under his hoofs but becoming solid lava rock just beyond the wave-break) he shakes and marvels at the change within him. But still, the voice urges him on.
Tephra is safe, he knows, but he will have to cut through sickened lands and expose himself to reach the Mountain. Knowing this is the way Wallace went (with the voice crooning and calling in their heads), he does so without hesitation.
It isn’t an impossible journey, but the bay roan is weary when he finally makes it to the Mountain. He’s used to his dragon’s wings carrying him over large distances, used to the added endurance he is loaned when he’s a beast. That, combined with the emotional toll of the last few weeks leaves him ragged around the edges when he finds the gathering. His gold-flecked eyes find Wallace first, but he does not go to her. He’ll be here for her (he’ll always be here for her) if she needs help, but he recognizes that they are possibly on two very different missions. Instead, he listens to the sermon delivered from on high. Ah, so they’re the clean-up crew.
Fun.
Here, he thinks briefly of his dad. He was always getting involved in shit, wasn’t he? Does the torch automatically get passed down just because he went and got himself killed? Doesn’t that prove exactly why you shouldn’t get tangled up in the affairs of the fairies? He sighs deeply because he knows he will do it, anyway. He’ll freeze his ass off on Icicle Isle and bring back whatever trinket they couldn’t poof to get themselves. Maybe he misses Ischia and wants things back the way they were. Maybe he feels badly about all the sickness and suffering. But really, he could do so much more damage as a dragon. Why do they have to walk all over god’s green earth?
Sabrael decides to walk all over god’s green earth. He trails Wallace for a while, still stubbornly clinging to his worry that she might need him (she had once, after all, and that memory still haunts his worst nightmares). But somewhere along a Hyaline river, with the late snow crunching under his feet, he loses her. He climbs up and over the mountains that remind him of his childhood home, the Dale. At the summit, he looks down over the land spread out before him, thinking of all the people he could help if he kept going. It’s not what he’s ever intended on doing; he’s a rather selfish creature when it comes down to it. Cold mountain air wakes him from his comfort, though. It clears him of his doubts. Yeah, Dad would normally be the one to do this, he thinks, but Dad isn’t around anymore. I am.
He skirts through the Taigan forest between sun-up and sun-down. It’s easier without his usual accouterments, but he’s still glad when the last pine-tree shadow passes over his speckled coat. Thick forests make him edgy. He much prefers the wide-open skies, and that’s exactly what he gets when he passes into Nerine. The air grows cooler and the sky greys. Even the water darkens from the vibrant cerulean of Ischia and the Island Resort. This place matches his personality almost perfectly, a fact he vainly notices while hoofing it up the final cliff before the sea. Sabrael winds his way down to the beach below, noticing the deep caves carved into the shoreline. He wonders what treasures they hold (and now, what sicknesses). When his hooves meet the edge of the water, the stallion looks away into the horizon. Somewhere out there is his destination.
He steps out into the chilly sea.
The water is rougher here already, even before his hooves lift from the course sand below. Waves crash over his back, chilling him with the spray across his face. He’s no stranger to swimming. Spending so many years on Ischia from a reckless child to a reckless adult meant that he knew the sea as intimately as the shore. Sabrael tries to work with the water, not against it. He paddles when necessary and rides the pull otherwise when he can. But it grows colder the further out he gets. A creature of fire and warmth, he grows more sluggish the colder he gets. He misses the dragon now more than ever. He would singe his own skin to feel some warmth at this point. Just when he thinks his limbs will freeze into place and he will sink down to the bottom of the ocean, Sabrael sees the nearing shore.
Icicle Isle, he muses, aptly named at that. Nearly delirious with his chill, the stallion rushes to get out of the freezing sea. He falls to his knees in his rush, banging them on the frozen ground. Pulling himself up without dignity (and without care), he looks around to the new place he has landed.
![[Image: avatar-1975.gif]](https://i.postimg.cc/8PxJp5dv/avatar-1975.gif){kind=avatar}
| 
