❀
Toro continued to elect to stay away from Solterra. It was almost certainly a bad thing - it had been a month or so, at least, and he hadn’t even been Champion for that long. But it seemed to him that an era of peace - however brief - had finally dawned on the Day Court, and Orestes had been hard at work on more courtly things than facing off challengers and the like. Toro had left with only a short note to Orestes’ assistant, and then he was off, traveling southward until he finally reached the edge of their world. The Terminus Sea.
It frightened him.
El Toro had never gotten this close to an ocean before. He’d crossed land bridges and portals, and once even ventured through an underground tunnel system. Arriving in Novus had been something of an accident; portals were easier to stumble upon in some worlds than others, and all it took was for him to trip and - poof - he was somewhere else. Luckily, his gold had come with him. A near-universal currency was a terrible thing to lose.
The sea looked to him like a great conglomeration of monsters, ever-shifting, crashing into stone and collapsing in on itself, always roaring. Midday sun, still spring-cool, did little to shield him from the sea breeze. Sometimes he thought he saw horse-shapes, sometimes other shadows that he did not wish to dwell on. He stood at a cliff’s edge (when did he not?), a shiver running down his spine as he peered over the edge. (The edge, it whispered to him, the edge the edge the edge.) He stepped back. A small path ran down the cliffside, steep and craggy and unwelcoming. The tide had pulled back from the shore just enough that he could venture downward if he wanted. Fear twisted his stomach into knots; concern ran through his bond with Hajduk, the lion chasing gulls along the cliffs, just out of sight. I’m fine, Toro assured him. Something drew him to stay there, and it was not the ledge.
all welcome!
