[P] Softly, the waves sigh

[Eik]

In the training he went through as a boy, they said repetition
repetition
re-pe-ti-tion
is what made killers of warriors.

They said you had to make the movement second nature, so that in a fight all you had to do was turn off your mind and let your body do what it knew how to do.

But for as long as he could remember, Eik could cleave his mind in two-- and that is how he became a killer. Because when swinging fists and lashing out with teeth, a part of him could always be elsewhere. Away to where the sea crashed violently against the shore, or where the grass grew tall as his shoulders. It made him good at what he did, because he did not have to rely on repetition. Half of his mind could improvise, could expedite, and the other half could be far away, spinning cobwebbed poetry.

Perhaps this skill of his, this half-here half-elsewhere nature, is what drew that strange magic into his veins. Although he also wonders, sometimes, if he was drawn to the magic and not the other way around. (always pondering the chicken and the egg, this one. always churning circles in search of the line. never content with a damn thing)

He's doing it again, right now, that splitting of the mind, and even as his attention draws to the stranger part of it is elsewhere, opening and closing doors made of stormclouds. Until the stranger bares its teeth and it strikes him that this creature is perhaps not Horse as he first thought.

Suddenly, the two halves combine and she has all of his attention. It is too late.

"What the--"

He dodges one-- no, two fish. The others slap his chest and shoulders with strange, soft squelching sounds (not at all familiar like the dull thud of hooves slamming into him) almost musical as they hit in quick succession. He is more shocked and confused than hurt, and the way the creature skitters off reminds him of a wounded animal-- and he realizes, as they retreat into the fog, they are wounded.

His magic reaches out instinctively and skims the top of the creature's mind without his command. It is as thoughtless as the beating of the heart. She (she?) is mostly things unknown to him. Flecks of stardust (which is dull and grey, not the shimmering dust of fairytales) and a wild, swaying darkness and-- there, something familiar, something slick and dark and slippery-- fear.

She is afraid of him.

"Wait--" he calls out gently, reaching out his magic to plant the seed in her mind: wait. It is a command that she will not hear but her body will. He reinforces it with a calm energy (he was good at calm) and a suggestion of trust. He steps forward just until he can see her again through the lazy fog. "You're hurt," he speaks slowly. His magic takes root in her mind and shows her a picture of a wounded tree, bleeding sap. The sap thickens and stops and the wound slowly grows over with new bark. Healing. "I can help you," his magic whispers to her mind.

- - -
@Nizizi that reminds me of this hyperlapse of the future (a 30 minute video but well worth it!)