"Had a weird dream again?" Cassia interrupted, her voice rather more nurturing than the speed with which she had dissected her son's preoccupied expression and completed his own thought for him. That particular trait was an artifact of her soldiering days, and did not make her easy to rely on when he was upset.
Martin nodded. Where perhaps an elaboration would have been warranted, the branded colt lingered in sheepish silence with his chin tucked lightly against the gemstone in his chest. How could he ever hope to explain such a thing, when dreams that felt as vivid and real as his own memories collapsed into dust within moments of waking? How could he justify their importance at all?
Short answer: he couldn't. So he stopped trying, and as time went on he learned to face his dreams in silence.
~
Martin stood at the shoreline with the saltwater up to his fetlocks, letting the wind and waves wash over him. This was not the first sea he had encountered in his travels, but he felt a strangely satisfying finality in looking out on the unbroken horizon and knowing that, in this direction at least, he could go no further.
It comforted him, too, to be reminded of his own insignificance. Whatever splendor existed in the universe, it yet had space left over for simple folk such as he.
Martin closed his eyes and lifted his head toward the warm sun, breathing deeply of the briny air. There may not have been answers down here along the Terminus Sea, but the gilded unicorn found for himself a moment's peace among the soft cries of seabirds and the rhythmic splashing of the waves.
The green boy was playing in the waves, oblivious to whoever else wandered through here… for in this moment, he was in his element. Salt water stung his eyes, but it reminded him of home – of the island land he’d lived in through his childhood, of Eirhelm – the place where he’d found belonging and truly bonded to the water, and of Neverland’s shores… before Rufio, and before the Rift became a place with little more than haunted memories. Here, in the lands of Novus, he was finding his own again. Despite the fact that he was lonely, Pan found himself happy and carefree once more.
Here in the sea, he floated among the kelp beds, wrapping some of the emerald bulbs tightly around himself as he bobbed along in the surf. If you didn’t look carefully, you may have missed Pan, for covered in the sea grasses just beyond the break, he looked like little more than a piece of jetsam. With his belly to the sun and his ivory mane fanning out around him like a pale halo, he slept. It was commonplace to find Pan napping, for it was one of his truly adept skills. He could sleep, (or eat) anywhere.
Yawning, the boy stretched, his long white legs sticking out in odd angles from the surface of the sea, and one by one, he nipped through the kelp that bound him in place. Flipping over with a splash, he began to paddle toward the shore, but shrank back down where only his eyes peeked out over the water’s surface when he spotted Martin. After all – this was a new place, and he had to wonder if this stallion (the first horse-like creature he’d seen) was a friend or foe. Blowing bubbles beneath the water, he swam closer still, watching like some strange sea-creature from the briny ocean, waiting to see what the stranger would say.
And though he is weary from worry and travel, though he’s caked in road dust and sweat and now sea-brine, too, there is nothing now that could dampen his mood. He is home (or near enough, according to Florentine) and it is beginning.
Even so, he is not ready to present himself to the Dawn Court yet. His hair a wild, salt-stiff tangle, his tail a briar-patch, even his horn dulled by weeks of wandering - ah! it was unbearable to think of making his first appearance so. He was to be a scholar, not a hedge-witch, and so he would stay until he looked the part.
Of course, that proved difficult whilst standing on a beach, and the wind was intent on working against him. He’d barely begun to comb through his dark coat when a particularly large gust dusted him with sand and he decided the task was best done elsewhere. With a whicker he began picking his way up the beach, searching for the trail that had led him to it. Before he found it, he found the unicorn.
The stallion was the very picture of one, all lean muscle, head high, bathed gold and cream in the sun. Charlemagne fell still for a moment, and something like jealousy shadowed his joy like a passing cloud. Here, indeed, was a stallion that would make his father proud, and the chestnut considers turning away and finding some other way back up to the plains. His gaze skirts out to see and snags on something, pale and large, that was also watching the golden unicorn. Charlemagne’s brow furrows, green eyes squinting, but with the glare of the sun and the sparkle on the water it’s hard to be sure what he sees. Were those ears? A trailing mane? Were there horse-eating kelpies here?
If there were, surely the young stallion could defend himself. But as soon as the thought crosses his mind, Charlemagne tosses his head, willing it away. He was not home any more, to hide away among the scrolls. Beneath the scolding of the gulls and the susurrus of the waves he lopes forward, stopping just out of reach of all but the white foam of the sea. “Excuse me,” he says, dipping his own golden horn, “but there’s something watching you.”
Never mind that Charlemagne had been watching, too; he was certainly not going to be eating anybody.
