AND A GOOD SOUTH WIND SPRUNG UP BEHIND; THE ALBATROSS DID FOLLOW, AND EVERY DAY FOR FOOD OR PLAY, CAME TO THE MARINER'S HOLLO! IN MIST OR CLOUD, ON MAST OR SHROUD, IT PERCHED FOR VESPERS NINE; WHILST ALL THE NIGHT, THROUGH FOG-SMOKE WHITE, GLIMMERED THE WHITE MOONSHINE
Perhaps their meeting is inexorable. Perhaps Fate is woven in it, unavoidable, half-forgotten. Perhaps it is the remnants of all his snuffed-out, forgotten magic. That sounds right. All of Orestes’s forgotten shapes, his thousand-souled blood from another life that sends him step-by-step closer to her macabre smile. Perhaps his other-life magic seeks a place to come and die. And why not her hooves? Why not at her feet in a reeking river, glutted as if with death itself?
There is a snarling, dark creature that Orestes does not recognise but Ariel does. Stay away. The thing is of myth, rumoured up from old shepherds in the desert. The thing should not be real but somehow is, and Ariel is at the opposite bank burning as brightly as the sun. He appears abruptly from the undergrowth and casts burning-hot, too-bright light across the river. It dances across the algae bloom and transforms the dark meeting into one of stark, unforgiving light.
And that bright gold wafts over Orestes. There is a tingling in his heart, his chest, a want to let his own magic shine. Yet his own, living magic does not rise to meet it; it stays dormant in his blood, forgotten, and the luminous gold glints and catches in the stark silver of his old scars, nearly dancing. Ariel is growling, sound like thunder deep in his chest, a sound that reverberates in Orestes’s soul and begs wake up wake up wake up.
Trance like, he does not. Trance like, something old, he shakes his head. He is not the man she met before; the monsters he spoke of roil within him, a thousand incomprehensible shapes dancing beneath the dark blue of his eyes. Do you want me to answer back tonight?
It is so quiet, but her voice.
Then the river is running toward the sea—always, always, always towards the sea—and her teeth are against his ear. He braces himself against the current.
Don’t let it take you, Ariel whispers through their bond.
Please take me, Orestes thinks.
He is only a man.
He will never be “only” a man.
“What would you fill it with?” Orestes asks, and follows her eyes to look at the forest.
Solis is nowhere. But neither is any other god; and for a moment in the tangible silence Orestes wonders if it is only them, only them, and how close to monsters they really are.
@Thana
'GOD SAVE THEE, ANCIENT MARINER! FROM THE FIENDS THAT PLAGUE THEE THUS--! WHY LOOK'ST THOU SO?' WITH MY CROSS-BOW, I SHOT THE ALBATROSS
