"You see, though his body talks and moves and breathes,"
Her words are ash, fuel spent by fire. His chest tightens like it's trying to keep something inside.
"I think my father is dead."
"I think my father is dead."
"I think my father is dead."
His voice is sandpaper-dry, his tongue heavy with dust and regret. "Sounds complicated."
He does not tell her how his father is dead, too, except unlike the young stranger Eik would never meet the elder grey again. Old Valk was dead for years now, in a land far enough away in space and memory that Eik could not-- would not-- ever find his way back. And if he did, there would be nothing but bones to talk to.
How much loss lies between here and where we started?
... How much lies ahead?
He has no time for grief but he feels it rising anyway, and as it does the walls of the levee creak and strain against the mounting weight of unshed tears. His ghosts whisper to live is to suffer and it would be so easy to believe them except--
He feels something else, something more on the other side of suffering.
He can't give up until he knows what it is.
As they walk, the sandy landscape slowly begins to fill with boulders large and small. Palm trees beckon, just over the next dune. The Oasis. Past it, a thin trail of dark smoke rises. The capital. The stallion's pace has been slowing with every step, his breathing has been growing more belabored. His magic is all but gone now, and in its place a dull pain fills every cell in his body. His head drifts towards the ground, too heavy to be held up, and every exhale sends a whorl of sand into the air (the smell and taste of it too familiar to be a nuisance) that makes him think of the gods resting their heads so very near to the skin of this earth, stirring the winds of the world with their breaths.
His knees sink into the soft, warm sand at the edge of the water and it feels like an embrace, like the desert was for a moment something other than apathetic, but when the feeling passes he's just lying there, too spent to drink water yet.
I almost didn't make it, he thinks to himself reproachfully. He was foolish with his magic, letting it burn right through him
(or-- maybe I did not want to make it)
His eyes close for a moment, and then they reopen and return to the girl. From the ground she looks even smaller than she did when he was standing-- it baffles him. He wants to say I hope we meet again or my name is Eik or I'm sorry. But some words lose their meaning in times of war.
"You want to go that way." He gestures towards the capitol with his nose. "When you find him..." What exactly is he trying to say? Forgive him? Forget him? Love him? If only he had a smidge of magic left he could plant his intent like a seed in her mind.
If only he had a smidge of magic left he would see that her father's name is Raum and what he wants to say is Kill him.
"Good luck."
He does not think they will cross paths again.
@
Time makes fools of us all
