When I lived in Tundraland We'd have to guess before the hand
Of winter's tide, How many'd die, and dig them graves before the ground was ice.
Of winter's tide, How many'd die, and dig them graves before the ground was ice.
After being locked in a tower for most of her youth, Kassandra has come to appreciate much of the things found on this fine earth: she likes the feel of dirt on her coat and the worms that crawl in it; she likes the gross heavy smell of rotting leaves in the fall, wet with mildew and infested with creepy, crawly things; she likes the feeling of ice frozen on her whiskers and the sharp pain in her lungs that frigid temperatures bring; she even likes sneezing through yellow clouds of pollen in the spring as the flowers bob their heads in gentle breezes and Oculus tries to eat the bees and regrets it.
But gods does she hate the heat. She hates the way it lays across her shoulders like a heavy blanket, and she hates that there's no escaping it! You can only take so many layers off before you were just skin on top of muscle. She hates the way it makes her feel ungainly and large, even though she is a bit… oddly proportioned; and as much as she loves the opportunity to be blinded by the sun at any point in the sky-- for when she was a child she had a roof over her head and could only see it at a certain time when it would stream through the silver bars on her window-- at some point in the endless days of brightness and heat she does feel a little bit like a digging a grave for herself to crawl into because, oh, wouldn't the touch of deep, cold, wet, earth just be so sweet?
So when she sees the sky above smothered with clouds she is hopeful, for a brief moment. Then she feels the humidity in the air and her mane sticks to her skin and she's so sick of it she wants for weeping. The air is thick with the smell of storms and moisture, begging for release, and somethings somewhere has to give. “You know what I think we need, Oculos?” she says to her companion, her tone of forced positivity the chilliest thing in the vicinity, “A break. We need a break.”
you can swear, Kas, Oculos chides, eyebrows waggling, it will make you feel better.
“A trip to the beach would do nicely, I think.”
i’d chase a seagull, he says in the way a bar patron would say I’d have a beer.
The day is gray and her mood is gray and she’s crotchety for no good reason besides the heat. The relief she’d hoped to find has eluded her once again, but she’s not entirely sure it’s from the temperature. She hadn’t had a vision in weeks-- not a single dream, asleep or awake. Perhaps they were finally gone and she was free of the curse that had hounded her since her youth-- but that thought no longer comforts her as it once had. What was she without her visions? A silly little star-crossed girl with nothing special about her, that’s what.
Of course, her nights of silent, black sleep and unbothered days could be a portent of something else, something sinister. Some horrendous nightmare waiting in the wings, preparing to pounce, and there was nothing she could do but sit, and wait, and not know.
She plunges herself into the foamy white pre-storm surf before her thoughts could blacken like the sky in the distance, and the sea is cooler than the air as it crashes against her indigo chest. Nearby, Oculos has flopped in the khaki sand, pink tongue lolling and eyes half-open. At his feet lay a scattering of tail feathers snatched from his unsuspecting prey.
Kassandra ducks her head into the black waves and lets them crash over her neck, fingers of foam sluicing across her shoulders; she throws her head back with a mighty breath and inhales salt and heavy air and fights back a scream. She repeats the motion until her chest hurts from the clench in it.
She comes out of the water, hair dripping and plastered to her neck, and looks over her shoulder at the distant lightning that could have been her eyes playing tricks on her. Oculos comes to his feet with a languid stretch. what’s eatin ya, chief?
“Nothing,” Kassandra grumbles, walking past him, “and I think that’s the problem.”
the problem is… there’s no problem?
“Hush.” She trudges on towards the cliffs. “Let’s go watch the storm roll in.”
She finds a path cut into the sodden gold rock that’s wide enough for her bulky heft and lowers her head into the quickening wind. The crowns of the clifftops are covered in flowering phlox, the dark olive moss peppered with pink flowers, and they would at the very least make a comfortable bed to lay down in and watch the storm in, if not die.
She sees him before she hears him, in the way someone recognizes motion without understanding the source; but his voice, familiar and foreign all in one timbre, makes her heart freeze-- not with cold but in a warm, mushy sort of style that makes her stomach queasy. It’s hope that peaks in her bones and makes the muscles in her shoulders quiver. And she knows it’s him and she knows she’s staring and her voice comes out ragged and salt-licked from dousing herself in the sea: “Septimus?”
And all at once she’s a little girl again and she wants to run and throw herself against him and laugh and grin and screech a little with glee but she holds herself back with a grinding of her tongue against her teeth because he’s refined and she should try to be refined, she's not a little girl anymore and maybe he'll like me now no that's stupid I'm stupid. And it’s been many years since she’d seen him, since she’d first seen him, and how funny all the things she’d forgotten between then and now but this tragic breathlessness was not one of them.
At her heels, Oculos licks his lips. ah great, he groans, this tool again.
She resists the urge to kick him off the cliff.
