Heavy, heavy 

is the climb. 

The air is thin and, with winter, the air is bitterly cold. But still, he

climbs,

higher and higher, 

until the only trees are wind-bent conifers, and then

only rocks, only snow. 

Orestes has never been so high in his life. It is the first time he has felt fear in longer than he knows, with the steep and narrow path, the gut-wrenching cliffsides. The wind, it howls, and howls, and howls, as if a wendigo baying for blood, for flesh, with no body to claim the prize. It whips his mane into a frenzy—it tangles his tail in a whirl of flying hair. Yes, and that wind: it bays and bays and bays.

There is no sun, here. The clouds are too dense at the peak and his magic is snuffed out like a flame in cupped hands. The lack of magic leaves him cold to the quick. But there is something driving him, nearly frantically, upward. His limbs tremble, his breath comes short and quick and still does not seem to reach his blood. 

That something is a cat. 

Ariel makes short work of the steep cliff-sides, and despite his desert-thin coat, the cold does not penetrate him as it does Orestes. The lion casts haphazard, impatient glances over his shoulder. He does not open his mouth to speak, but hardly needs to. Orestes can sense his judgement and discontent from the slight twitch of his lip.

Must I remind you, Solis is waiting? 

Orestes grunts, summiting a steep, ice-slick bank. “I am well aware. Thank you, Ariel. You have told me—“ 

Apparently not often enough. 

And there the sun lion goes; around a bend, up a steeper incline (how is there something steeper?) and bounding up a number of rocks. 

Where his paws touch the ice sizzles and melts. Where there is darkness, he burns in brilliant light. 

Why is it so dark? Orestes thinks, following with laboured breath. This is nothing like the desert. This is nothing like the sea. His eyes, lungs, nose, mouth—they all sting with the cold. 

Ariel chimes in, Perhaps that is why we are climbing the mountain, Orestes. To pray to an angry god. 

Orestes snorts, but does not take the bait. Besides, they are nearly there. The ground is beginning to even out, and a pathway cuts through the chest-deep snow. Orestes ducks his head and is pleased to discover the howling wind has abated just enough to allow him to process his thoughts. Ariel has not told him the significance of the journey, only that it is necessary; the desert had been atypically overcast with the coming of winter, and Orestes assumed it was either time to pray for rain or light.

Ariel is out of his sight now; but Orestes does not worry. Something is changing… the path is opening up, and the mountain becomes its own type of offering. He steps from the snow into a soft bed of moss, and listens as the wind seems to grow more and more distant with each passing step. Orestes takes in the scene; the carved stone figures of the gods and the way the peak of the mountain juts at the sky, as if to gut it. Ariel is across the small meadow, bowed before a stone sigil. Orestes trots toward him and places the candle at the base of the statue; with a flick of the lion’s wrist, Ariel has lit it and it burns bright beneath the statue.

How have you gone so very far from the sea? It is Orestes’s first thought, and it feels ungrateful. So he bows. His tattoos gleam cool, metallic silver beneath the clouded sky; he closes his eyes and tries to think of the prayer he ought to say.

Orestes has never prayed. 

It is so obvious Ariel feels the need to address it. “Sovereign. You start by addressing your god. Like so.” Orestes cracks an eye as the sun lion lowers into a bow alongside him, head dipped into his shoulder. “Solis, I come before you as a servant…” 

Orestes begins to mouth the words—

But abruptly Ariel jerks upright. Orestes follows suit, casting a glance toward the same pathway they had arrived on. All at once, everything becomes very dark; darker then even the overcast sky. Orestes’s bonded yowls, a sound loud and piercing and full of distaste. Orestes cannot stand to look at the Sun Lion: already he is glowing the ferocious, brighter-than-bright colour of a star, neither white nor yellow but pure light. 

“Good afternoon, stranger—I do not mean to be rude, but you are disturbing—" Orestes begins, quietly, to the figure that casts such a long shadow. But he trails off—this reaction is atypical for Ariel, as far as he knows, and there is something deeply unsettled building within him.   

@Tenebrae 

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