STILL I DREAM MYSELF BLOODIED, MY BODY SWALLOWED my body grass-stained & longing for the treeline
Salt licks at Seraphina’s forelegs as she stands in the surf, her stare cast out to sea. Dark waves roll on the horizon, far less pristine than the electric blue things that lap at the shore; she thinks that she can see the bob of a tentacle or the shape of something that is like a dolphin or a whale but is somehow wrong in texture rise out of the tumultuous surface, but it is otherwise as grey and murky as she expects of the Terminus, crowned by thin lines of milk-white foam that she can see even from a distance. There is not much foam at the shore; in spite of her stirring, and in spite of the roll of the waves against the sand, the water is largely undisturbed, and it is so blue and so clear that she feels like it could be artificial. Silver fish dart beneath the surface, some swimming dangerously – rebelliously – close to her legs, which stand like pillars sprouting out of the sand. The water is warm, although it is winter, and it would be soothing if everything inside of Seraphina did not burn – burn like a forest fire, left to rage out of control, not like a warm hearth. She does not burn with love. She burns. Everything inside of her is burning to the ground, and it leaves behind nothing but ash and smoke. She used to think that, like the silver of her coat, she was those things that trail after fire-
No. She can be the flame.
But, for now, she is waiting. Ereshkigal circles lazily above her head, barely a dark blip in the cloudless sky; she considers sending the vulture ahead, to scout for Raum, but a moment of consideration makes her decide against it. The island is likely full of dangers, if it is anything like Tempus’s maze, and much as the demon unnerves her and angers her in even measures, Seraphina needs her. If nothing else, she can serve as her eyes as she advances on the forest. She only knows how to navigate open landscapes, and the wild forests that the island seems to promise, full of strange creatures and even stranger magic, will likely be no aid in her efforts to navigate – and, more importantly, to track down her targets.
Crows. Ravens. Gods. She isn’t sure if the discrepancy – the divine and the monstrous – is hilarious or heart wrenching; and, given the magic of her mortal targets and the ugly, wicked feeling that knots up in her stomach when she thinks of the gods, she is beginning to wonder if there is a discrepancy or a line at all.
This much she knows: the gods can’t die, but men can.
When she hears the sound of hooves on sand, she turns to look over her shoulder, the dark yellow of her hood falling back to let her long tangles of white hair, half-undone from their braids, flutter loose in the ocean breeze. She takes in the sight of the Dusk king, with his star-spangled pelt and his deep brown eyes, and she thinks that maybe he is a bit older than when she last saw him – a bit wiser, or a bit stronger, or a bit more determined. Seraphina watches him, haggard and waning, with the eyes of a starving thing, and, when she speaks, it is only his name. “Asterion.”
@Asterion || I wasn't planning to start this so soon, but Tempus,,, chose for me. "Speech!" || "Ereshkigal!"
YOU MAKE THE WORLD BY WHISPERS, SECOND BY SECOND whether you make it to a grave or a garden of roses is not the point
Wind rustles through the pines. Though the branches are covered in needles, the sounds they make as they brush against each other – dull, rhythmic clapping – suggest that they might as well have been bare. Disregarding Ereshkigal, who is leaned over her shoulder like some pale, red-eyed shadow, there are no birds in this stretch of woods, and the thatching of needles is so thick and dark that it might as well be night. (It could be night – time passes strangely here, and she does not know how long she’s been walking besides.) There is a chill in the air that seems unnatural on a tropical island, inland though she may be, and it sends a shudder crawling up her spine. The world is a mesh of dark green and murky brown, with what little light can find its way to the forest floor so dull that it is barely light at all; she has to squint to see clearly.
When the wind halts abruptly, Seraphina is left only with the sound of her hooves against the dead, dry needles.
A distant, looming sense of danger has been building inside of her chest since the volcano erupted; it is loudest here, practically a crescendo, with only her thoughts (a black, tainted growth of grief twisted out-of-shape into a rage that does not resemble her at all, a rage that eats) and her own presence (small and uncertain, among the trees) to block it out. Some part of her can’t shake the feeling that she is in the maze again – trapped on all sides by narrow, winding paths that she didn’t know how to navigate. As she draws further into the forest, the trees grow closer together; she can barely continue walking without brushing up against them. Her movements feel stiff and awkward, here, among all these trees.
Seraphina is a desert creature. She has never felt comfortable in enclosed spaces or forests, much less those that are so lush that she cannot see the sky to navigate.
It is too cramped and too dark. Her mind reaches out for Ereshkigal, who, sensing her thoughts, shifts. “Fly up – see if we’re still going the right way.” The vulture, for once, does not argue, and, with a flap of her wings, springs out of the canopy; Seraphina lets her hooves dig into the soil and waits for her return.
Several moments pass. A gust of wind curls through the trees, and then the world is silent again. Seraphina fidgets, staring into the darkness of the woods. The trees cast long shadows, and the faded patches of light barely make any distinction to their dark forms, leaving the lines fuzzy and indistinct. “Ereshkigal?” The word is out of her mouth before she realizes it; Seraphina leans up against a tree, her gaze trained suspiciously on the distant stretches of wood. She cannot tell if the shadows are trees or something else entirely.
She tells herself to remain calm, but the foliage is too dense to use Alshamtueur for a light. She feels trapped.
No response comes from the vulture. She tries again, over their mental link. “Ereshkigal? Come back.” “I can’t,” comes the vulture’s reply – it sounds fuzzy and distorted between her ears, and Seraphina cannot tell if she is playing with the sound of her voice again or if something far stranger is at play here. “I tried to fly back down to you, but it wasn’t the same place – I don’t see you.”
They’d been separated, Seraphina realizes, with a shudder. “Are you sure that it was the same place?” “Yes.” Ereshkigal’s voice comes out as an irritated hiss, but it is still distractingly distorted. “I flew straight up, then back down.”
The forest had separated them. She casts an uneasy look at the line of trees in front of her, shifting her weight from one hoof to another. “Keep flying towards the center of the island,” she says, her ears flattening against her skull. “We’ll meet there.”
(She isn’t sure that she’s walking in the right direction anymore. It was north from where she started – but what direction was north in this perpetual, murky darkness?)
Still she draws forward into the woods, with every gust of wind through the branches enough to make her glance over her shoulder; she does not pull it from its sheath, but her mind holds a vicegrip around the hilt of Alshamtueur, as though the sword could do anything against the strangeness of a god’s magic. She had been the hunter, hadn’t she? A once-queen hunting a madman who took everything from her, or a raven who’d betrayed her fragile trust, or a god who she might have believed in – she had been the hunter, and the vulture her hound. But Seraphina didn’t feel much like the hunter now, prodded by branches at every side, unable to shake the feeling that she was being watched by something. In the desert, in the light of day, she was a predator. Here, she was another scared girl, sinking in dark water because she could not swim – another girl, lost in a maze, who, when she managed to crawl out, bloody and bruised and just a bit heartbroken – because she could handle rejection from most anything she didn’t believe in, but she’d never had the skin to survive those things that she did -, would wonder if she was the same creature who’d stepped into the endless tangle of green or if she’d ever really escaped it.
The shadows make her think of that bulbous ink-monster and his dripping mouth – and he could be out there, and she would not know.
She swallows her tongue and keeps walking. Seraphina is accustomed to being alone, or she is resigned to it.
She wishes that she weren’t alone now.
As she continues into the woods, deeper and deeper, darker and darker, the trees become more widely-spaced – and larger. Soon, she finds herself standing amidst trees that seem impossibly gargantuan; they are still pines, but too ancient, too oversized; it takes her two strides to clear their roots. The wind is silent again, and her steps are still crackling against the indistinct brown shapes of needles that are arger than her hooves. At least, she tells herself, as she moves uneasily through the trees, there is more space here.
But she smells blood.
Seraphina doesn’t mean to find the dead bird. In fact, she tries to avoid it; as a rule of thumb, when one smells blood in a strange place, they try to avoid the source, to avoid the thing that caused the bloodshed in the first place. However, though she attempts to walk in an entirely different direction from the source of the smell, she finds it growing stronger and stronger, and finally she finds herself staring at a massive old tree. Cradled in its roots is the body of one of the strange birds she’s seen in other places on the island, but it has been brutally dismembers; its organs, bright red, are spilled out and tangled across the roots, its wings have nearly been severed from its body, and its eyes threaten to bulge out of its skull, though she struggles to make out the details in the dull light. Uneasily, she wonders what killed it. One of the small wildcats, perhaps – she’s seen plenty of them in the woods, dark shadows among the branches…
(She hopes it was a wildcat.)
(She has seen no other living things – besides the trees – for miles.)
Taking a deep breath, Seraphina reaches for Ereshkigal again. “Where are you?”
A moment passes with no reply. Seraphina freezes – she can’t feel the movement of her mind against her own at all. “Ereshkigal?”
Again, she is met with silence.
Seraphina backs away from the dead bird, a dull hint of animalistic panic igniting in her chest; perhaps the vulture is just ignoring her, or pretending like something is wrong. That must be it. Nothing hurts. Ereshkigal can’t be dead - she’d feel it.
Instead, it feels like – nothing. Like she is alone in her head again.
She glances out into the darkness again, then down at the dead bird, and stares out into the dark, unable to discern where she came from. Her mind grasps at Alshamtueur, and she knows that she should use the sword to light her way, now that there is space for it, but instead-
She wonders if that won’t just draw more attention.
@ || the first open with sera in,,, a while. a tense little post? || grendel john gardner "Speech!" || "Ereshkigal!"
The water around the island is bizarrely clear. Logically, O knows it is the same water that fills the ocean beating against Novus’ shores — that there is, in fact, no real difference between this beach and all the world’s others. But still there is something strange about it. It is clear all the way to the bottom of the sea, though of course whatever’s down there is distorted by leagues and leagues of water. As O stands up to her knees in the shore and peers way, way down, the miles-far clumps of coral and schools of brightly colored fish pop out at her, as clear as if they were only yards away.
The rest of the island bustles with activity, but she is still, for now content to watch. Her strange eyes are happily fixed on the contents of the ocean. Behind her on the sand, hordes of strangers whisper, scream and laugh; seabirds crusted with salt and song go swooping through the air; the air bursts with noise and movement. And still O remains in place. Her short, dark hair is ruffled by the wind, and jungle mud specks her coat. She obviously has not been home in a few days. But she is content, and that is obvious too — her eyes are bright and watchful, her stance is strong, and a little smile tugs ever so slightly at her sooty lips.
She does not make much of an imposing figure. The island is much more dangerous than she will ever be, brimming with poisonous fruits and predators that look like friends. And most of the strangers flooding over the bridge are bigger, older and stronger than her, too; more than one of them is likely to wield dangerous magic. Against any of these, O would find herself at a disadvantage. And yet — magic hot in her blood, hurlbat heavy at her side — she feels stronger than anyone else.
The sun makes a head-splitting pattern of white on top of the ocean as the waves come crashing in, and O squints, trying and failing to keep the glare from her eyes. Even the briefest moment of distraction, she knows, could be the birth of a million problems.
The island is utterly unconcerned with the traditions of weather, season, or reality.
Though across the cracking bridge it is spring, warm and bright, here in the jungle even the thick, glossy canopy of trees cannot totally block out the grayness of the sky and the way rain comes hurtling down. The ground is fearfully loose; leaves and roots and hooves slides in the mud. The birds with their strange metal eyes go hurtling through the wet air, and O — small thing that she is, drenched to the bone — stands stubbornly against the gnarled body of a jelutong and tries not to shudder as the water seeps into her skin. It is not fear that twinges in her chest, but it is something like that. Who could blame her?
She has never been a quitter. The antidote to that kind of laziness runs in her blood as thick as anything else. No, even as the little forest animals go scurrying underground, as strangers flee the island for the ocean and as thunder cracks and splits overhead, O holds her ground. She is spattered with mud and scruffy from what must already be days away from home. Bexley is here, somewhere — they’d caught sight of each other near the leather-black unicorn statue — but has disappeared somewhere O is not willing to find her. No matter. She can take care of herself.
The little girl narrows her eyes, and rain goes flooding from her eyelashes down her cheeks. The jungle is empty, but it is flooded with sound. High-pitched caterwauling, hollow birdsong, the drumbeat of paws pounding over the dirt. She tosses her hurlbat in perfect circles in the humid air by her head. The sound of its sharp edge slicing through the wind is somewhat of a comfort. No matter what, she thinks, this belongs to me.
The crack of a tree bough sounds, too loud to be any more then ten yards away, and O slashes the axe out in front of her defensively, where it bobs like a ghost. She squares her shoulders. Overhead, a bird with fool’s gold for eyes watches and twitters in disappointment.
The whole of Denocte shines in moonlight. Bexley cannot be sure if it’s meant to look like that or if it's simply a trick of the night, but something in the stone reflects the silver as pure as water and washes it into the street. Even where the lamps shine from their sconces, the light is… cold, somehow wrong. Though the night is warm, the Solterran shudders; her pulse ratchets high, quick and loud in the depths of her chest, and turns her blood black in her head so that she almost can’t see where she’s going.
Her steps are unsteady on the pavement, and each stride sways. The strangers in the street glance at her up and down with derision — is she drunk? Ah, if only. Bexley’s dark ears are pressed flat against her skull as she lowers her head and goes slinking through Denocte’s narrow alleys. She moves like a snake, quick and quiet, and the cloud of pure white hair that is her tail goes snap, snap snapping against her back legs in a warning. She is a formidable sight, Solterra’s golden girl.
(Not much longer.)
Moira, Moira, Moira. The girl’s face plays in her head over and over, like a perfect, terrible mirage. No matter what Bexley does she only thinks of Moira and all the ways she needs to be fixed — all the ways the world has broken her since the day she met Moira that night at the festival and all the new cracks she sports like scars. Nothing is the same. Nothing will be the same. And of course Bexley is old enough to know this is only the way of the world, but that does not make it hurt any less.
The streets are perfectly quiet. It is deep-dark, so that the stars shine with all the light in the world, and Bexley’s heart aches and aches and aches as she remembers the last time she was here and the reason for the path she walked. Her ears ring with the sound of his voice. Moira, she scolds herself, Don’t think about him, think about Moira. Think about Isra. Think about how you’re going to get your life back.
Think about how you’ll get to kill Raum.
And her lips twist into some ugly facsimile of a smile, just barely. Finally the citadel rises up above her, looming ominously tall and close with all its windows woefully dark but one. In her eyes shines the pure dead of a girl with nothing else to lose. Her face is beautiful in stone, Grecian as ever, but something in it is — incorrect, unsettling.
I AM MORE THAN ONE THING, AND NOT ALL OF THOSE THINGS ARE GOOD --
After walking for what felt like hours but couldn’t have been hours, judging by the position of the sun in the sky, Septimus stepped out of the woods and into a clearing.
He supposed that it could have been hours – apparently, this island was host to a god of time, or at least his relic, and, judging by the reactions of the locals, the gods of this land were very much real, physical entities, rather than the stuff of legends and myths. Septimus hardly knew how he should feel about that. What defined a god? If it were simply more powerful than a mortal, most of his family (the portion that were not mortals themselves) constituted divinity. If they were omnipresent, omnipotent – well, he supposed that the forest, which was a living, unknowable entity in and of itself was a god, but not one that anyone would worship. (It would not know what worship was.) Did that define a god – something that was worshipped? But mortals could be worshipped, and he wasn’t sure that made them a god. Did a god have to have some aspect, some representation, some duty? That seemed no different than any mortal thing off to work in the morning. Was it the immortality? He had been immortal, once. That didn’t make him a god. Perhaps it was creation, making something from nothing at all – but these gods must have bounds. He had been to lands, in the past, where the people had claimed their gods were living things, but he had never encountered one, and they were not the same as the gods of Novus. If their powers were limited by geography, were they still gods? He didn’t know.
What he did know was this: he did not trust the blue, blue pool in the midst of the clearing. Plants, with shimmering flowers that felt like they had the color and texture of oil spills, hung heavy over the banks, but their petals did not fall to disturb the surface. In fact, the surface was so perfectly still and untouched that Septimus found it suspicious. It was almost impossibly clear. He could make out every detail of the bottom – the little ridges of stone – from where he stood, several feet from the bank. However, there was no living thing in the water. The color was brilliant, a shade he had only seen in precious stones, and the clearness made it seem impeccably clean, but it was lifeless. He did not see the silver glint of sun-touched fish dashing below the surface; he didn’t even see a plant growing amongst the rocks.
Behind him were trees, hung heavy with fruit that must have been out-of-season. He could hear birdsong, and rustles in the distance, but there were no birds in the clearing. If he intended to stay here for a few days, travelling all the while, Septimus knew that he would have to eat or drink eventually, but this - this felt dangerous. There were places like these, back in the forest, and those unwary, unlucky travelers who fell for their traps would be condemned to terrible fates – to dance to death, or disappear for a hundred years to return to their families as nothing more than bleached bones, to be dragged beneath the surface by some unknown, unseen entity and devoured.
However, Septimus possessed a certain, scientific curiosity that insisted he draw closer to the shore. He didn’t want to approach, exactly, but he had to – he needed to know what secrets the water held. (Perhaps he could take a sample and analyze it later, though he didn’t know how to do so without his magic.)
Tentatively, hesitantly – his hooves all but dragging in the sand and mud – he stepped forward, towards the pool.
A snort escaped the maw of the snarky stallion as he paused in the mouth of what seemed to be a cave system. He was still exploring the world that he had found himself in and it was amusing him to see the beings that called this land home. Those beings were hilarious in his eyes, most seeming fascinated by the idea of Gods and Goddesses. That was a world that he had never been too interested in, feeling that he was fabulous enough for anyone that desired to look his way. Shaking his head at the absurd idea of deities, he pushed to venture into the cave and explore.
The caves seemed quiet, not much in the way of activity to be heard as he flicked his ears and allowed his cyan eyes to travel over the rocks around him. He missed one as he was moving, causing him to stumble and draw to a stop in the middle of a tunnel section. Frowning down at his right fore hoof, he wondered if the perfection of his vibrant green hooves was marred by the rock. Dropping his muzzle, he felt along the edge of his hoof carefully. A surge of relief enveloped him as he felt no damage.
Shaking his head, Coy melted deeper into the cave, eyes seeking any beings or even distinguishing features that would tell him where in the world he had ventured to. He paused in the entrance to a cave and listened to the silence around him as it was sporadically broken by echoes and sounds that he couldnt pinpoint. Settling into the darkness, he decided to close his eyes and catch a quick nap. Being fabulous was so much work!
Spring was infiltrating the cool winter morning. It filled the air with anticipation, with hope, with the excited uncertainty of new beginnings. Alaunus was eager for the change in seasons, as he was eager for all things. He wanted to see the ocean thicken with shoals of fish come to spawn up the mouth of the Rapax. He wanted the trees to regain their leaves and the air to fill with the scent of their blooms. He wanted to see the newborn fawns, with their big ears and wide eyes, take those first shakey steps.
But most of all, he wanted time to hurry along so that his bonded would regain the use of her wounded wing. It had been months now since the incident that left her land-locked. She had gotten close to flight on numerous occasions, but in the end she always backed out. He did not blame her, of course, feeling through their bond the complex layers of emotion behind her actions. He used his magic to help stitch together broken tissue and encourage new growth, but there were some wounds that burrowed into the heart. Those only time could heal.
It had been something like a week since they last came here, to the salt-flecked cliffs where the wind rose strong and steady. It was not quite dawn and Alaunus was more than happy to wake the rest of the world. He flew low and graceful over the wind-swept cliffside, squawking loudly. Flocks of drowsy terns took flight, roused from sleep by the commotion, and among themselves they chittered angrily. With every flap of his large wings, crickets scattered in the grass below, afraid for their lives. Wake up, wake up, echoed the wind beneath his wings. Today is the day.
Behind him Samaira walked slowly but certainty. She was the picture of calm grace, yet the bird sensed fear and anxiety rippling through the connection between them. He circled round her, rousing more small birds and insects with his flapping and his squawking, before finally coming to rest on her hindquarters. "Is today the day?" He asked her eagerly. They stood at the edge of the cliff, watching the sun begin to color the sky in dramatic shades of burgundy and indigo.
How many times had they stood on those cliffs together? How many times had she said "maybe tomorrow"?
Everything is vulnerable at sunrise. But she stood there until sunrise burned itself and all its frailty up. It burned clear into morning, a bright, beautiful morning, so full of possibility that it almost made you a little sad, knowing you would only ever experience so many of them. It made the large bird’s heart swell with excited certainty.
"Today's the day." He declares as he picks at some loose feathers on himself, and then on her. "I feel it, don't you?" Without speaking further, he reaches out his magic. Pinpricks of heat start at the tip of her wing, where feathers met flesh, and run all the way down to her shoulder. He feels the energy gathering there in a ball of warm golden light that spreads across the joint of her wing. "Stretch," he commands, sending the golden light into the space between muscle fibers, between muscle and tendon, between tendon and bone, and finally into bone itself, in all those hollow spaces between that collagen framework.
The light of his magic is clear and bright, unmarred by shadows of old or current wounds. "Today's the day!" He laughs delightedly, a cawing, heaving sound, and the bond between them glows bright with the strength of his youth and his joy and, most of all, his love. That love bends and sways with his magic like two currents in the ocean, and as he fills her with healing energy it becomes impossible to tell where his love ends and his magic begins, or if there is even any difference anymore.
"Are you ready?" He hops down to stand behind her, flexing his own wings in preparation, in a promise: This and all things, we do together.
@Samaira might feel the energy in the fresh spring. The flowers are starting to bloom, the grass is lush across the muddy cliffs. Everything is full of life today-- the hum of a heartbeat, the rustle of feathers eager to taste the wind. Her bonded is full of energy, and maybe a little bit of sass. It's a great day for flying, isn't it?
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This quest was written by the lovely Rae and I failed and forgot to post it D: <3
Dancing through the lovely spring morning, the appaloosa and friesian stallion moved like water. His neck was arched, muscles bulging with health and strength, and his ivory colored feathered legs snapped into the air. Vibrant green accents stood out against his night and snow pelt, his appaloosa blanket gleaming in the light and almost seeming to glow against the ebony of his coat. His tri-colored mane and tail seemed to float as he moved, wind mussing his fabulous tresses.
Sliding to a stop, Huehuecoyotl lifted into the air, forelegs pawing at the morning air and bright green hooves flashing as they struck out at nothing. He was in a new area, with new beings to find. The morning was gorgeous and seemed to be humming with promise. Falling back to earth, he trumpeted out a call to the world. He had arrived and felt that everyone was deserving to be with his fabulous presence. Or at least, until he found one that did not deserve it.
"Well... This place has potential... Potential for so much fun..." He smirked as he looked around him with vibrant cyan eyes. Settling into the earth, he stood like a statue and allowed the breeze to tickle his gleaming coat.
He likes treasure.
He likes shiny, rare, valuable things.
Is that not what got him into this mess in the first place?
No matter.
The lucent, buttery sun breaches the horizon, splaying an array of vivid, impressionist colours across the sky, bleeding into one another, making shades he’s never before seen in a sunrise. (And he’s seen his fair share of sunrises.) Mauves. Violets. Tangerines. Lemons. Sapphires. Deep, velveteen blacks and blues to his rear where the sun has yet to shine her vaulted mandala of rays through the thickness of the island’s nights. He squits, tilts his head away from the impossible brightness of it, turning to look, once again, across the treeline in which he stands, half-in, half-out; hind feet sunk into rich, dark soil, held tight by myriad roots from big, lush tropical flora, front feet in shifting, bone-white sand.
Shadows, strange and long, cast back from the new sun, they are purplish and lively, and it seems to him at any moment they could unroot themselves from their corporeal prisons and take to searching themselves...
He walks on, weaving through trees—soil, sand; sun, shade—until it seems, heat having been dispersed across the yearning plains of his bright, white coat, he is ready to plunge back in. The forest is deep, thick, verdant and cool in the morning, pleasantly so. Darkly so. Strangely so. Odd birds of paradise sing in from their perches high above, lyre and harp songs, their string orchestras make for a beautiful dawn chorus. He begins to hum as he walks, joining their symphony, becoming one with the thrum of this place—around him, others wander, some feverish, some nonchalant; they all wander for the same reason, more or less. The prognostications of that young horse, that note, that statue: there’s a relic to be found. It mattered not to him that he was not familiar with the God, in whose forge that mystic thing may have been cast.
That’s beside the point.
He moves with hitched, albeit cavalier strides, waking up the aching bones of his body. He had slept, somehow, but he had not slept without fit, and his body felt the punishments of his thrashing against root and stone. When will this end? he wonders; the voice echoes back, ‘when you repent...’ but by then once-princeling has seen something glister in a mote of wan sunlight behind a wide-leaved fern, and does not hear it. He rushes forward, ruby eyes wide with seeking greed, underbrush grabbing at his grey ankles, snapping with his pull and tug.
It is nothing.
Just a jewelled bird who squawks in a light, baroque viola, and alights into the cool, morning air. He curses under his breath, “for Frith’s sake,” and waits for his breath to slow, before stepping once again into the ceaseless march for something unknown.
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