heaven help us, says your unholy mouth, your hands on my hands
I don't know where the darkness ends and you begin.
The autumn sea is unlike any other. It is, perhaps, the only sea that Vercingtorix relates to. He watches the waves with steely eyes; there is a storm-front moving in, as is wont to do when the seasons shift. It is this sea that has brought him back to Novus, from a venture outward, a venture into other, foreign seas. Torix had bartered from ship to ship, trading work and knowledge in exchange for passage, until he had visited so many islands and countries he had lost count. None stood out to him, even now, even staring out at the shore of Novus. Everywhere, he thinks, the sea is the same. Even in the tropics, away from cliffsides and the cold of currents, the sea glares and winks and breathes. As he stands observing, the cold wind buffets him and carries with it the brisk tendrils of winter. The hair of his mane whips wildly into his face, but Torix allows it; the sting is a welcome reminder of where he is. The tide is falling low and in it his eyes scour the beach, searching—rumours have it the Scéal live here, the water horses of Terrastella.
Gealach and, among them the Comhar, the Dathuil, the Diasca. In fact, from what Torix has garnered of myth, all of Terrastella is haunted by the beasts; inland live the Séasúr, ghouls half-starved and haunting the swamps of the nation. He is still unaccustomed to the word “kelpie.” It flits off his tongue inelegantly, foreignly. He hates it and yet it is the word the most cultures seem to recognise. Vercingtorix does not believe he will find them here, not now, not with the storm rutting up along the coastline.
Eventually, the clouds cross over the blue that is left in the sky. He feels the first stinging pinpricks of rain.
He wonders if she is out there. He wonders, more fully, if she has any idea he is back in Novus. The only reason he returned is because, no matter how many water horses he found and defeated, their deaths seemed empty. The thing that bound him to the slaughter lived in Novus. Vercingtorix memories of Bondike—no, no, she had stopped being Bondike years ago—Boudika were so vivid he can see her running where the surf meets the sand, a flash of red and black, so bright, so brazen. They had once raced up the coastline in a dare, fearless of the dangers beyond.
Yet, that had only been because they had had one another. Now when Torix stares at the sea it is with the knowledge his flank is exposed.
And it is your fault, he thinks to himself. Strangely, the internal voice is not so different from his father’s. The drizzle of rain intensifies—and then, out several yards, Torix watches the kelpies breach.
The herd of them is breathtaking and luminous. They hit the surface in a plethora of equine colours, reds and bays, blacks and dapples, some with horns and many without. Their skins look slick and seal-like, or catch the thin, waning light to reflect from scales and iridescent skin. Then, like that, they are gone.
Torix was so captivated by their appearance—and the affirmation that they are, in fact, real—that he did not hear the telltale sound of approach.
He jerks his head in the direction now, however. His smile is quicksilver. His smile is mercury, and arsenic, and radiant. All things that will kill you. “You shouldn’t sneak up on a man like that. It is a good way to end up with a spear through your belly.” In saying it, Torix acknowledges his spear is lost. In saying it, Torix acknowledges day by day he sounds less like himself and more like the father he detests.
He appraises the golden mare with a hard eye. “You shouldn’t be out here alone.” It is what he has always said to women by the sea. It might begin to sing to them—and if it did, they would be lost. They were all born with one foot in the sea, and one on land. And this is something Vercingtorix will never forgive them for.
"Torix." || @
prophets sang of you, molded in your father's image
i'm not sure when they stopped; heaven help us, but no one is answering.
