i'm the one who strived for nothing, i'm the one who stood in rain
A chorus of birdsong exploded from somewhere below the forest’s canopy. Rum on the island! Ram on the island! They continued like this, a mournful pause between syllables, an alternating verb each round, for seven rounds.
Caine stilled. A moss-covered branch caught at a spill of gauzy black fabric draped across his withers, but the fabric was too slippery to be snared. The branch snapped sadly away with a soft woosh, like the fluttering of moth wings.
Seven. A memory sparked in his mind at the number, and the chanting of the birds fanned the flames.
One for sorrow. Two for joy. The crinkling of rotting parchment as memory-Caine rolled line by line of the rhyme out into the lamplight. A magpie sitting in the tree outside his window.
Five for silver. Six for gold. Sweat beading down his back from an unusually hot July.
Seven for a secret, never to be told. He smiled ruefully. So that’s what it was. After all his anticipation at unearthing an ancient scroll from the depths of the Garde’s library, it had turned out to be little more than a nursery rhyme. A few lines of clever alliteration sang to children before bed.
He hadn’t thought he still remembered.
Caine’s ears swivelled drowsily about his head. Beads of humidity pooled down the slope of his shoulders and traced silver streaks down his ribs. It was hot, but pleasantly so. Not like the hungry heat of the desert, which demanded every drop of water until all that was left of the weary traveller was skin and marrowless bones.
This heat demanded nothing but to be felt.
His thoughts ran in quiet circles, content to weave through the forest of trailing vines and whispering streams until, with a reluctant sigh, he called them home. Exploration was all fine and well -- it was what he had come for, and had found in surprising abundance -- but a pair of three-lidded birds and a night-black panther was warning enough. The island reminded him, in every step and every breath, that he was far from the most dangerous thing it held in its palm.
He supposed the birds had been trying to say “Raum.” And like water through a mill, once this conclusion was drawn with pragmatic acceptance, his thoughts tumbled easily on to the next point of consideration. Because strange as the birds were, Caine knew they were little more than mimics. They must have picked up the king’s name from snatches of conversation, thrown around by worried Denoctians or Solterrans or -- Novusians -- dearly afraid that a cobra had slithered in under the bedsheets.
This amused him, if anything. To Caine, Raum had just as much reason to be on the island as anyone, which was to say: no reason at all.
So, yes, it was likely the king was here.
The possibility of the blood king (his blood king, he reminded himself with a rare, indulgent grimace) being on the same volcanic landform as him did not trouble Caine as much as it should have. He had left the consequences of his actions behind when he’d stepped from bone-white beach to shadow-touched forest, and he would take the flock of king-calling birds as a welcome reprieve from reality. Even if it meant he was only delaying the inevitable.
He looked up. Rain dripped rhythmically down from the canopy, and if he narrowed his eyes through the drizzle he could just make out the curl of a monkey’s tail as it sheltered under the leaves of two slippery, lichen covered trees. He looked up, further.
Three hulking shadows watched him from one drooping branch. The flock of mimics had really been only three. Exhaling, Caine counted five lidless eyes where there should have been six, decided he would rather not find out what had taken that sixth eye, and promptly forged a path in the other direction.
What is it, he thought, as he cut through the dense underbrush, with birds and this damn island?
If it was meant to be symbolic, then it was a bit much.
Caine held his breath as he bent over the disemboweled creature left messily at the foot of the tree trunk -- he was familiar with fresh death, not rotting death -- and nearly cursed when he discovered that the poor animal, which he’d thought an abnormally large squirrel, was instead the same species of blacker-than-a-raven bird he had encountered on the beach.
He looked at its nearly severed wings and winced. Under the dull light, it looked like a miniature version of his own --
“Ereshkigal?”
He stilled, and for a fragile moment did nothing except watch his breath stream out in condensing fogs of white. If he’d had the wits for it, he would have laughed. Because of course, of course -- if Raum had no reason to be here, than neither did Fia.
The forest was stitched out of shadows. So it was as easy as stepping behind a tree, closing his eyes, and bidding for them to come.
But the cloak could not smother sound, so Caine bit down on his tongue as he willed for his heartbeat to slow. The clearing was too silent. Could she hear it? The thud thud thud of his frantic heart. Too late, he remembered her demon.
She would hear. Demons always heard. But, he told himself, she had been calling her name. The demon is probably not here.
And yet, before he had time to scrounge for a more reassuring thought, someone else was.
Caine stiffened when he heard the snapping of twigs and dead leaves, only to slacken again when he remembered. Demons -- or whatever unnatural specimen of beast this island housed -- would not have had the courtesy to make a sound.
“You look like you could use a companion.”
The intruder was not a demon nor a beast. But the relief did not come. Caine did not move, even when the stallion’s sudden appearance had given him the perfect chance to escape. Instead, a rush of irritation coursed through his veins and pooled at the corner of his slow-forming sneer.
“Have you been here long? I’m Pravda."
He realized that he’d had quite enough of escaping.
Hadn’t he left the consequences of his actions behind when he’d stepped from bone-white beach to shadow-touched forest?
“Excuse me for the intrusion.” He had scattered the shadows with a jerk of his head before stepping out, yet still he did not emerge unarmored. And the armor he had chosen, with careful consideration, was contempt worn in the trappings of a smile.
“Three’s a crowd in most situations, but when death lingers so close,” he skimmed his gaze lightly over the carcass, before raising it to rest on Fia. “It makes you appreciate the company.”
Perhaps the island would allow him to escape his consequences. But what the island would not allow, was for him to discard his own identity. Don’t you dare, it crooned in his ear, like a mother crooned to her child, forget what you are.
And what he was, was a traitor.
@Seraphina @Pravda | "speaks" | notes: forgive me this was SO long ;__; but the excitement is real!!
