[open] No prayer gonna part my thunder [any]

[magnus]

— find what you love and let it kill you —

It is perhaps a good thing Magnus found her first.

He knows what it is like to wake up from a magically induced slumber—to crawl onto the shores of Beqanna and find her changed. The first time, he had been spit up from a saltwater grave and centuries had passed. All but a few faces were gone. The kingdoms were the same and yet wholly different—what they stood for, no more, who ran them, strangers. The second, he had come back from a magical prison; this time, it had only been a few years, but wars had passed, death had struck. It had been different again.

So he recognizes the symptoms, understands the confusion, and his heart aches for her.

Magnus doesn’t move, he just drops his head slightly, his gaze steady on her own. “The deserts?” he repeats for a second, before the thought connects. Oh. She had been gone much longer than he had originally thought. “I am not sure how to tell you this,” his voice is quiet, and he watches her carefully, trying to note any signs of distress—or, rather, any more signs of distress. It wasn’t as if there was an easy way to tell someone that the land they remembered had been swallowed up and a new one had formed.

“The deserts were flooded quite a long time ago,” he finally offered. “But much has changed since then. This is not the Beqanna you likely remember.” And then, he fell quiet—trying to give her a little time to take in the information. He knew how disorienting it was and he wasn’t about to rush her through the process. If she had questions, he would do his best to answer them. If she wanted to be taken somewhere, he would try his best to get here there. It was the very least that he could do.

magnus