Help me out before I drown
Save me now before I give up
It is his first winter in Loess and so far the weather had been kind enough to dust a fine layer of snow over the cold desert landscape. When he had been a child, summers had once been his favorite season. He had loved the heat that penetrated through his chestnut skin and warmed him to the point where he was sweating simply by standing. It was sad, how the warmth of the sun could feel like an embrace. Ledger’s childhood had been a terrifying and lonely one. His earliest memory was that of his mother being slaughtered on the beach just mere hours after being born. Kidnapped and frightened in a strange world with a foster mother (his mother’s murderers mother) who didn’t pay much attention to him as she entangled herself in the caresses of his true father who hadn’t even known he existed. So he sought affection where he could, even if it was just a patch of sunlight.
Now it’s winter that he craves. Once he was cursed with the bear, he found he could no longer stand the humidity or the sweltering heat. The sun no longer felt like an embrace, it felt suffocating and overbearing. He found comfort in the feeling of a cold rain shower drizzling on his face, in the icy cradle of frozen snow that he could burrow deep within when the world became too much. Mostly he enjoys the soothing sounds of the ocean as the cold water rose over his furry skull and he can drown out all the noise, both in and out of his head. He hasn’t forgotten how he had tried to send himself to a watery grave in the height of his madness. How the bear refused to let them die. There is no fear of the depths of the sea anymore, not after that.
He’s lounging in the shallow surf now, for anyone else the freezing temperatures would steal the breath from your lungs but for him, it’s merely a pleasant sensation. He’s not in his ursine form although he considers it momentarily. Things have been quiet in his hidden cove of the kingdom, it’s been easy to shift without too much fear. It’s been some time since he’s seen the visions of ghosts in the daylight but they still haunt his dreams at night on the rare occasions that he can sleep. It’s not easy for him to let his guard down, he doesn’t trust his mind to not take advantage of him when he’s most vulnerable. He knows he’s less of a danger to himself or to others in this space Oceane has given him but it does leave him with a lot less stimulation and he’s often lost in his head which isn’t always the best place to be. His thoughts often turn to the past, to all the failures that he piles like weighted stones on his back, to everything that was and everything that should have been. A breath slowly exhales from deep in his chest as he closes the one eye he has left, feeling the soft brush of water against his sides as he focuses on the count of his breathing and does his best to let the memories pass by. This is how they come to find him, whoever has stumbled into his little pocket of Loess.
Ledger