After Itek rested, we headed off again, even as another storm brewed on the horizon.
He was exhausted. I felt it in the way he took deep breaths every once in a while, and how he'd skim the rough currents of air as much as he could, flapping with great effort that seemed to require his whole body, and as the storm gusts got rougher, he had to work harder. We hadn't had anything to eat in... a while, and he'd been fighting the sky for days.
We skimmed along the shoreline of another island, still heading more or less due south. This one seemed a bit larger than the others, although in the fading light I could still make out the glint of water rimming the shoreline across dunes, grasses, and jutting rocks. This one had impressive rocks, large boulders that stabbed up from the sandy dunes like the thick scales of a huge dragon. Something on the western side drew my attention. One of the rocks seemed taller, more slender, and it rose high above the field of churned up stones. The red light from the setting sun made it seem very black and charred.
Itek was too exhausted to ask him to go investigate a rock spire or whatever it was, so I strained my eyes as much as I could. Maybe some old ruins of an enclave? But it was impossible to tell. It was... maybe twenty, thirty miles away.
Yay, Theia, you noticed an interesting rock. Good for you. Use your eyes to find Korr and Ethat.
I had a Trinket, wasn't I supposed to like... know... if something had happened? Shouldn't our souls have called to each other? That's how it worked, right?
I tried to focus inside (no small feat, given I had no idea what I was doing and I was on Itek holding on for dear life...or whatever my life was worth these days) and like... I don't know, try to catch a scent or something.
I am so, so stupid.
They had to be out here somewhere. They had to be.
I focused on the sensation of my trinket pricking the calloused skin between my breasts with every buffet of wind, breath I took, and flap of Itek's wings. I focused on Itek, what he was beneath me, how his wings felt, how his pelt felt, how his feathers felt, the warm, quivering strength of his sinew and bone as he fought the currents, the sunlight baking both of us as it threw off red, fiery rays as it fought the motion of the stars pressing it downward below the horizon.
A thousand small, intimate touches, details.
And where Korr and Ethat were there was... nothing.
Nothing.
Not nothing, but nothing.
There was no Itek either, except the Itek that was beneath me.
I opened my eyes again.
Nothing.
There just was... nothing.
Even the memory of a dream felt more real.
I loosened my grip on Itek's rough and forced myself to let go with one hand. I looked at my palm, raw, chapped, scraped up and dry.
A gust of wind damn near unseated me.
I plunged my hand back into his feathers and he swerved under me to re-seat me, cawing in surprise, and I shouted, "Sorry!"
The trinket raked across my skin.
No, this was real. Real enough, anyway. And I knew Korr, Ethat, and Itek were real. They had trinkets too. Asund was unfortunately real too.
So why was there just... nothing?
It felt sort of like when I'd fallen asleep on my hand and woken up with it totally numb and so numb and floppy I couldn't move it, even though everything said I was moving it.
Itek swerved and banked, wings working to catch an updraft. A huge gust of wind caught us from behind and up, sending us up way higher than I wanted to be—ever—and Itek struggled to master the massive punch of air, and it shoved him forward, flipping his ass up like he was a bucking horse.
I toppled over his head.
It took a second to realize the feathers in my hands were no longer actually attached to Itek.
I plummeted towards the sea.
I screamed and flailed, clawing at the air hoping I'd magically turn into some kind of shifter with wings.
Itek screamed and dove after me, his wings tucked hard against his sides as he dove. The wind knocked me and punched me over so I could only see the ocean waiting for me.
My soul screamed in terror.
Itek, Itek!
Nothing heard me.
A massive talon snapped around my waist and I gasped as the impact of him grabbing me knocked all the air out of my lungs, my spine stretched, and pain dug through my lower ribs and pretty much every soft organ.
Itek swept upwards with me in his claws like I was a rabbit. Minus the bloody puncture wounds. A light rain started to patter us. We'd ended up far out at sea again, and I could barely make out the silhouette of the shoreline as I dangled in his grip.
Fighting the pain in my spine and ribs, I made myself look up at the half-orb of fiery sun still peeking over the horizon. It was a great view.
"Itek!" I shouted. "Itek! Over there! Over there!"
The storm and night had clouded and darkened the sky, and there was just a last bit of fiery sunlight skimming across the top of the waves. But in the shadows of crests and the sooty dusk, the sun caught something bright and gleaming. I pinned my eyes on it: it looked like a piece of metal floating on the surface.
It was not a piece of metal: it was Korr and Ethat! They drifted with their large wings draped across the surface of the ocean, their necks entwined and heads resting on the other brother's shoulder. On Ethat's back clung a small (relatively) dark, soaked form: Assund. I saw dark ocean through the holes in their wings.
Itek sailed in a circle over them, riding a thermal, and bellowed a gryphon's roar. He had to get lower and do it twice more before Ethat finally opened his eyes and raised his head very slightly. His eyes brightened, and the fireflies illuminated very softly as the last of the light disappeared.
Assund woke and raised his head as well. He barked at us and wagged his tail, but he did have his head at a confused angle and stopped barking as he realized I was riding in Itek's claws.
How did we get them back? They were miles out here. They might drift away by morning!
Itek flapped his wings and caught a thermal, and headed back towards shore, unsteady in the air. When he landed on a rocky outcrop on the same large island as with the spire—which I could still see in the far, far distance—he collapsed into a loaf and just panted. It's kind of disturbing to see a gryphon pant, so I don't recommend it. His wings trembled with exhaustion.
I flopped onto the stone as well. It hurt to breathe, and my back was killing me, and my whole body hurt. I wriggled my toes, then decided I was (at worst) bruised so I could suck it up. Laying around like a useless lump while Korr and Ethat (and Asund) were in the ocean was not going to happen.
How were we going to get the others? I shoved my finger in my mouth and held it up to the breeze. Maybe the storm would blow them to us? I couldn't swim out there, it was too far, and even I could, how was I going to drag back two big dragons and a soggy wolf?
Being useless sucked. I couldn't do a damn thing.
We needed... a rope or raft or something. Or a sea serpent to appear. Or a herd of hippocamps.
If I was the lost hippocamp princess... could I summon them to me?
I looked at the narrow spire silhouette in the distance. The old hippocamp town was supposedly on the other side of the bay. Was it this far south? Maybe that spire was the marker saying Hippocamps Are Here. If I could summon some hippocamps to help...
"Itek," I said, "How do we summon hippocamps? Oh, nevermind, you can't tell me. Well, can we? If we can summon some hippocamps, they could bring Korr and Ethat in."
Itek cocked his head to the side.
"What about over there?" I pointed at the spire. "Is that were the old hippocamp village is? You think if we went over there and I splashed around in the waves it would summon some hippocamps? Like, if I actually am the lost hippocamp princess, maybe someone would recognize me or something."
He craned his neck around, looked where I was pointing, and then back at me. He couldn't speak, but his expression was clearly what the hell are you talking about?
Okay, it was a bad plan. I glared at the spire. It had to be... it was a long way, and with the jutting rocks, no chance I could traverse it myself. Itek could fly there, but he was exhausted, and he was looking at me like I'd lost my mind, so time to shut up.
Itek stood up, stretched his wings, and sighed, then shook his ruff and preened a bit. He extended one wing and craned himself around like a pretzel to get a look at the feathers on the edge. He clucked, making concerned little growly-bird noises.
His wing did look moth-eaten and there were missing feathers.
The wounds in his haunch looked clean enough, though, they just weren't healing very quick. I carefully touched them in what was left of the light. He rested the paw so his other leg took all his weight. "They don't feel hot," I said. They felt warm, but he'd been in the sun and exerting himself. They were a little swollen and oozing clear fluid.
He clicked his beak.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you, are they very painful?" I yanked my hand away.
He clicked his beak again, and shimmied closer to me.
I hesitated and put my hand back over the wounds. He bobbed his head. I rubbed a bit, and asked, "Does that feel better?"
More head bobs.
Well, okay, maybe it was like massaging a bruise. I rubbed him all over, gently, and he flexed his back leg, and it seemed like the wounds weren't quite so sore or tender.
"Think we can fly down to the beach and I can flop around in the water to see if I can summon some hippocamps?" I asked hopefully.
Another head bob.
A quick flight to the beach. I got into the waves up to my knees and sat down in the surf, and batted the water with my hands, although how the heck do you summon a hippocamp? I had no idea. I'd never even seen one. It wasn't like they were rare, but they didn't come inland.
Oh, that was right: I wasn't actually where I thought I was from. Maybe I had met a hippocamp as a kid.
Maybe I was a hippocamp.
I rolled the idea of am I the lost hippocamp princess in my head to see if it resonated with anything. It didn't. Felt like nothing.
Felt like stupid, actually.
Itek waded into the water next to me, wings carefully tucked high on his sides.
"That feel better on your legs?" I asked. Because the sea water out this was didn't seem too badly contaminated, and it didn't burn my skin, and it actually felt pretty good after the searing heat of the day to sit in the waves. Itek nodded, eyes gleaming in the darkness, and he raised his eyes towards the storm in the distance. The wind reached us here, but the storm didn't seem in any hurry to get to us.
"Think we could... make a rope out of some of those grasses?" I asked. There was plenty of tough sea grass around, and I knew how to braid rope from tough plain grasses, so maybe I could do the same thing from the grass. Grass ropes could be pretty damn strong, and I had plenty of grass. Whether or not Itek could haul everyone against the surf was also a big maybe. Itek's claws and beak could easily saw through the tough grass. "I don't know if it'll be stout enough to get some dragons but... we could try?"
He cocked his head to the side in the darkness, and nodded. The faint flickers of lightening in the distance reflected off his dark eyes.
"Okay, so I need grass that's as long as possible," I said. The tall beach grass was... well, tall. Some of the clumps came up to my waist.
He heaved himself up, went to a grassy area, and clawed up a beakfull of the tough beach grass. He brought it back to me, then plunked himself back down in the surf to watch.
I separated the lengths out (it didn't matter if they got wet), and knotted off the first segment. I shoved the knot between my big and first toe on one foot, and started to twist and braid the grass.
Itek watched with interest.
"I've done this a million times," I told him as I worked the wet lengths of grass, which cut through my palms, but that was fine, I barely felt it and didn't care. Everything on my body was sore. "Back at my old enclave... I mean, I guess the one that doesn't exist anymore."
I paused in working, confused.
Itek nibbled my hair gently and crooned.
"Yeah, well, you had to braid rope." I kept working. Everyone braided rope for everything, and you could actually make some coin if you were able to get enough grass and had strong enough hands to twist it all into thicker ropes. Getting the grass was hard unless you had the right knife or scythe. "So that's how I know how to do it. They can be pretty strong. Don't know if it's strong enough to haul dragons, but have to try."
Itek went to go get more grass as I needed it, and was intrigued by the length of rope I was able to produce from the grasses, except it was slow, and we'd need lots of rope because Itek couldn't get fly close to the ocean.
There was just enough light to see by with the stars, the half-moon, and patchy thunderclouds off to the distance, and I could make the rope mostly by feel. I was tired, my body was sore, and my fingers bleeding, but I didn't care. I had to do something.
"I was thinking, Itek," I said as I worked.
He clicked his beak.
"I can't sense Korr, or Ethat, or you. Asund doesn't count."
He cocked his head to the side and made an inquiring noise.
"Like... sense you. Like we're supposed to be able to?"
He tilted his head to the other side.
"There's just nothing," I said. "It's not even like the memory of a dream, or like having the word on the tip of my tongue, or even just having a blank. It's not even like a blank piece of paper. It's just... there's no paper at all."
I twisted the fibers tighter and harder as I tried to explain it, but how do you explain a nothing that is so much a nothing that it becomes something?
Itek preened my filthy, tangled hair with the very tip of his nasty beak.
After listening to the ocean for hours, the sound of something large—several somethings—drew both our ears. Itek jumped up, growling, and snapped his wings out wide.
Three large, dark, not human silhouettes rose out of the waves, illuminated by blue-green lights under the water. Two pulled staffs out of the water, the blue-green lanterns swinging with the water draining off them, the staffs tucked against their upper bodies by long arms that ended in a single webbed hand-fin, and they moved towards us, scales shining, long multi-colored fins laying around their equine necks like manes, horns curling out of their heads where ears should have been.
There were three of them: the two lantern-bearers on either side a brilliant blue-green turquoise, and the middle one looked jet black tipped with silver, and red highlights through its spectacular fin-hair, with a necklace made of kelp, shells, and translucent polished gems dangling around its neck to rest on its strong chest.
Holy shit.
Hippocamps.
/**********
PEEPS:
Did you see the thing I did? DID YOU?
It's "Saffron Star Bread" (you can just google that, it will come right up) I'm still feeling pretty fancy about it. Yep. Give me a gold star for my forehead.
For giggles, I calculated how much it cost me to make. $4.95USD. Not counting the cost of my time (because it takes a few hours because the dough has to rise several times) But how's that for less than $5? That's some prime Kitchen Kludge 2020 right there.
Of course, I screwed up mac n' cheese last night. My husband jokes that you can hand me a 50 step recipe and I'll nail it, but ask me to make pasta and I'll f it up everytime. It's kind of true, apparently...
Merry
(proof pantser)
*******/