"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
Wane does not bother to replace the look of satisfaction that finds his features with one of feigned and casual placidity upon Wax’s decision. Nor does he think to swallow his obvious derision when he passes Magnus, nearly close enough to brush his shoulder in the exchange, and says: “Later, Magnus.” All that Wane concerns himself here in the meadow is escorting his sister home to Nerine, and shooting Ilma a casual wink on the way out that he means only half as earnestly as it appears.
It would never work out between them with Khuma at home, anyways.
As it would turn out the trip to Nerine is a far shorter one when you don’t spend it behind the swinging hips of a lover in autumn, because Wane and Wax arrive in what feels like record timing. Neither talks about what’s happened to them, about how a three year gap could exist in the span of a mere twelve hour difference. Perhaps they should, but for now Wane is content just with her half-moon footfalls beside him. Instead of asking her where she’s been he makes jokes at Magnus’ expense, not quite able to let him exist behind them yet, and nipping her shoulders to punctuate anything he finds particularly clever.
Not once does he wonder about the unsettling quiet on their arrival into the kingdom; how he can hear the wind whistling through the somber branches of trees, but not the gentle hum of life beyond it. He is still reeling in his meadow victory to notice, but beyond that, the cacophony of Nerine has always felt small next to the deafening roar of the ocean. He loses himself here, and when he can at last see the granite cliffs falling into the sea like a lover’s arms beyond them, when the waves break again and again and again on the rocks, all that he can manage to think is that he hopes Wax will like it, too — that she’ll stay and he won’t have to ache in her absence again.
He doesn’t feel the contagion — how it settles in between the fine hair on their skin, how it burrows in to take root at the core of everything it touches; every molecule, every atom.
All he feels is the sea breeze as it whips his mane and stings his eyes until they tear up at their corners while the pair descends down a rocky incline carved neatly into the granite cliff face. Sometimes Wax crosses in front of a particularly bland piece of granite, and Wane notices how jarring the juxtaposition of her skin against it can be — but that’s all he notices, not the sickness. And at last, when they arrive at the cave entrance and Wane cannot help himself but to hesitate, as he always does (a silly tic, perhaps, because he always goes in anyways), wondering after Khuma’s state inside he doesn’t feel that anything has changed.
He imagines she has likely tasted the air and knows that Wax has joined him long before he will ever get the chance to tell her for himself. There is some relief in that, he thinks, and perhaps she would look like a horse for once in the name of putting on airs.
He doesn’t see it there, settling around them in between specks of dust and ocean debris.
Sickness.
All he sees is the cave, as it was a hundred times before this time — adorned with shells and pearls and fragments of bone. Here and there the scant trace of a ‘shed’ is visible, but Khuma is generally careful to keep a tidy roost and nothing screams out at him as particularly out of place. Upon entering, however, there are two minute differences that Wane recognizes almost instantaneously. The cave is empty — no Khuma, no egg. He eyes the empty cradle with increasing bewilderment, and finally he says to his sister:
When she isn't looking at him, it's easy to forget that anything has gone awry. This is just the adventure she had planned, and if her younger brother is now suddenly years older, that is something she cannot change.
Magic has always been a fairy tale to the winged horse, who would be both puzzled and delighted to know that her own existence is just as questionable to some as magic is to her. But magic must be responsible for this, and she accepts this easily, in a way that is exclusive to the young and the naive. Wax is both of these.
The girl’s mind is occupied with exploration; the world her brother leads her through is entirely unfamiliar. Home was just the beach and the water and the myrtle grove; she can hardly take it in. There is tension in Wane’s shoulder as he brushes against her, and Wax turns her bright eyes upward to search his face. It’s gone by the time she looks though, and he has moved forward into the mouth of the save with determination.
Uncertain of what to expect, the flaxen-haired filly is occupied with looking around, and so she doesn’t notice anything wrong until Wane speaks from where he has moved ahead of her. There is something concentric about the cave floor, Wax realizes, little trinkets of the sea circling a center that is decidedly absent of anything important. It’s that empty space that her twin stares at, and that must have once held the egg that held her niece or nephew.
Raising her head, Wax scents the air for a moment.
“It didn’t crack.” She says definitively, assuming that a cracked horse egg must smells at least a little like a bird or turtle. There’s only the smell of the sea here, of her brother and a cold scent that is mostly snake but also horse. Having briefly wondered how her brother might have sired an egg when he himself was birthed, Wax begins to suspect that the egginess of her nibling is a result of its mother.
“Could it have hatched?” Asks the red girl, having turned in a circle furing her inspection of the empty cave. “Or maybe someone moved it?”
In the heavy, autumn rain Khuma could have had him in any way that she had wanted. Wane had been a fool, thinking when he’d approached, a rakish grin crooked there on his mouth, that he’d held the cards — how quickly he had fallen at her feet, though, and all that it had taken was a few delicate bats of her eyes and the gentle swing of her hips. She spun him into her web with pretty, silk lies, and he had thanked her for it and asked for more. And while Wane had always loved women, it was unlike him to let one have him so completely.
“Take me with you, Wane. Keep me forever.”
Of course he had harboured doubts, but there in the rain he had been different somehow. Despite the idea of commitment that left him reeling he had not refused her and these months in Nerine have been trying on them both. If he is honest with himself sometimes she feels like a cage, with cold, iron bars. Sometimes she feels like a noose, like she draws tighter and tighter until he is left suffocating. It isn’t in his bones to be ‘kept’ like this. He isn’t made for it.
And yet...
Now, in so many ways what stands before him is exactly what he’s pined for — this cave cannot be empty when there is freedom nestled there in the vacant cradle that used to house his egg, it cannot be empty when it means his future is now so full of promise, can it? How can he feel lonely when Wax is right here, in the flesh, beside him? He can’t. So why then, does a lingering sense of loss come from nowhere and settle, weighted, on his chest? Why does a pang of remorse burrow in and lay claim to the patch of land beside his heart?
“It didn’t crack. Could it have hatched?”
Wax has always had a way of pulling him back outside himself, and she does it now. Wane shakes his great head and neck and with his nose begins to sift through the trinkets that remain as though he might unearth a giant egg somehow hidden among them. For a moment he wonders if that’s the case, that the egg’s contents have finally shook themselves loose and wandered into Nerine in whatever form that might look like. The thought, however, is one that he quickly releases as he realizes there are no fragments of shell among the the clutter, no disruption to the cradle that Khuma had crafted by hand, or rather, scaled reptilian nose, so many months ago.
“Or maybe someone moved it?”
Of course someone did.
Almost instantly the worry drains from between the furrow in his brows, replaced with something more akin to agitation. That’s exactly what Khuma had done, likely changing her mind on the cave and it’s relative position with the sun, or the moon, or something ridiculous like that. It seemed unnecessary and difficult though, even by her standards, this late in the game. He imagines a giant serpent rolling an egg; implausible, given the lack of hands and the steep, rocky inclines that would take her out of this cave and up to the flats. Khuma is stubborn though — she will have worked out a way.
“Did she roll it?” He ponders aloud, the exasperation lingering between the syllables not well hidden. He takes a moment more to consider it, but decides quickly thereafter to focus his attention on Wax. He would deal with Khuma once he found her.
“In any case, where have you been all these years?”