How to Catch a Fish

You could still be what you want to — (what you said you were when I met you) The sea was a distant roar in his ears. Growing louder and louder as he rode the unpredictable, freezing winds. Not a pleasant noise; it recalled too easily memories in his other senses. The sharp tang of blood, the throbbing pain of his raven's voice, the too-sharp ring of his hooves on the stone... Korri's flight path wandered lower. There, a violent, smothering field of blue: the capricious dance of the waves. Oh, he heard it still: the way it roared down the hallways, devouring stone. He would never love the sea. He could not imagine his raven seeking it out, but the shoreline crossed near Halyven, and he was not about to let his personal feelings keep him from exhausting every option. So he skated swiftly over the tidepools, his gaze scanning his surroundings in every dimension: the clear sky, the ugly field of the sea, the many gnarled trees bent over the rocks. It might have been a pretty place if he didn't hate it, but he did. He hated everything the sea stood for, even if this was not his sea. It tasted the same in the back of his mouth. And Auga wasn't here. He had lately a recurring fear: that she was nowhere. That the Rift had taken only him. Korri was comforted only by the knowledge, rooted firmly in his soul and undiminishing, that he would not live without her. He would first go mad, or die from the shock. His heart would shear in two and pour its contents into his heaving lungs. So she had to be somewhere in the Rift. He just couldn't figure out why he had yet to find her. She had no reason to hide… He searched for black, so his eyes first skated over the glint of gold there at the edge of one of the pools. But then he caught up with his thoughts, with the information coming in from his eyes, and wheeled quickly back. There was a moment — just a moment — of strange panic or elation or both at once where the color registered and he knew it, his own color, tossed here upon the shore like the lost piece of a shipwreck… But the boy had horns. Korri descended anyway, curiosity smoothing out all else. He came in at an angle, his hooves dropping a polite distance away, his wings scooping out a space appropriately wide between the trees. "Hello, there!" Korri called, the light timbre of his voice an easy melody against the crashing waves. His heart still beat uncomfortably fast. Of course, upon even the barest scrutiny, Korri found the boy to be of the tall and weedy Rift type, wingless, crowned instead with a pair of horns. The color was — a coincidence. And not even the same, really, upon closer inspection. Ears pricked, Korri approached anyway. He thought the boy looked young, and wondered at finding him alone, though not enough to feel concern. "I wonder if you've seen a raven anywhere nearby?" he asked when he had reached an appropriately conversational distance. "I'm afraid I've lost mine." Korri ❤

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@Galahad :D