Riptide Isles
R I K Y N & D U I R
Vacillating between emptiness, sorrow, and a strange, manic giddiness, my emotions seem to be as tumultuous as the sea, churning against the shore. Still damp from my wild swim over here, Duir angrily extracts himself from the brine, shuddering away the sea water, to be drenched furthermore in the rain. I hadn’t bothered shaking at all; what was the point? The thought stretches from my head into his, and the scowl cast towards me is dark, and petulant. Tired and weary from the swim, no where near as physically fit as I am, the young buck feels the softness that had been lulled into his body by the safety of the northern mountains more acutely than I do, and its left him even more petulant than me. For him, this is the first time he has been severed from home; the world has never been entirely new, as it is now, and has never been filled with so many unknowns. Our daily meals are cautiously eaten, and, unlike before, I am not a tour guide, who knows where each path goes. Here, I know nothing, and neither does he, but, unlike me, Duir has a hard time accepting it. The danger not knowing presented was slowly driving him mad, while I… I was going mad, from other things. Neither of us was really sleeping anymore, for one. The cerndyr was too frightened by the black magic coiling in the air here, while I was plagued by nightmares seemingly no sooner than I shut my eyes, if I wasn’t kept awake by worry for my young family. Having noticed the distance growing between Glacia and I, and not sure what to do with or about it, I’ve withdrawn, as usual. I find myself out here, brooding and alone, angry with her for daring to be so cold to me at a time when we clearly needed one another more than ever. If for no reason but for Gwyn… She’d been left with the others, safe enough, I’m sure. Turning my back to where she is, as if it will make me less anxious for her and Arleigh, I instead move my eyes over the forest, looming densely ahead, and the rocky landscape of this only vaguely familiar set of isles. Having never come when it was in Helovia, I’m not entirely sure what is the same, and what has changed, other than that I am sure these are the same stone shapes that had marked the horizon back home. Though I hadn’t allowed myself the thought as I’d come, I was here for the sake of feeling as if I was home, but, now that I was here, ears filled with the loud roar of the whirling vortex wending through the center-most islands of this small chain, I was disenchanted. Home is gone, I think to myself, sullenly, while Duir stares blankly out across the volatile sea. this is not destruction this is your birth — |
@Erebos
