Against the Wind

12.1 || Corvin

Night fell faster than Corvin remembered. It was his own fault—he moved at a sticky slow pace, drifting with listless intent—and it left him stranded still within sight of the city when the first film of darkness shuttered in. Head cupped in his palms and body pressed to the cool sand, he watched its lights blink at him from afar, gradually growing smaller and sparser as sleep befell the human settlement.

Staying this close should've made his skin prickle and prodded at his spine with icy fingers, yet fear seemed a strangely faraway concept. His feet swung to and fro. As he lifted a finger to trace the tops of the claw-sized buildings, drawing a picture of all the skyline's spires and dips in the air before him, the well he sank into was one of gentle, meandering peace.

Lost. He felt lost, though not in an unkind way. Lost in the way a piece of timber freshly snapped from its tree floated downriver: rocked in aimless loops, off on an adventure that did not yet have a destination, edges still brittle and jagged from being so harshly snapped from where it previously belonged. That thought was rougher, travelling the length of his body as a small shiver. He lifted his head and stretched his arm out before him, thumb tracing the pinkish pearl sheen of a recently healed scar. The moonlight caressed it, making the thin strip of skin appear as if it were stolen from someone else.

Perhaps it was. He shifted his hand to cover up the trio of scars, though the smattered presence of all the rest nicked at him like translucent knives.

He looked to the starlit sky and searched again for its easy peace. As if she knew how to assist, Meag moaned softly from her nest in the dune beside him, her dewy breath tickling his ear. He twitched it upward, listening to her soft snores. He'd missed her. Meag was a steady companion, anchoring in a way that nothing else could be anymore. She cared, deeply, and she came whenever he called. Kyril had called her useful, but also dim and lumbering and too soft, much too soft, head emptied by an excess of loyalty. He'd only ever tolerated her.

Knowing that had always been a source of slight discomfort, but now that silk-smooth sensation coiled pleasingly in his belly, made nippingly cold and bitter by spite. He stroked the mane of fur that slid along the back of Meag's neck, setting his chin down and tipping his head so that his cheek pressed to her snout.

"I'm glad you're here, girl." He gazed upon his slanted view of the desert and the city he should be running from. "Thank you."

It all should've been a warning sign. He should've seen the way those words could reflect—Meag should've been his mirror. He wished he'd recognised his own foolishness before Kyril had to spell it out for him in scars.

"You're all I have now," he whispered. He didn't know he was crying until his voice broke apart.

His time with Raya had been a chance to hide. Now, out on the cold, barren sands, with the human city far enough away to be confined to fuzzy-edged memories and strange tales, the feelings had no stopper. He could do nothing but let them flow, thick and weighty in his chest. Salt stung his lips and dried his throat. He curled his knees up underneath him, spilling a wave of sand under his cloak and between his bare legs, and sealed the world out. His antlers carved a network of trenches into the dune's edge as he turned his forehead downward, eyes scrunched shut. He tasted the echo of his whimper. It felt thin, fragile like a stray leaf drifting out into open, frigid air.

Freedom was a kind thing. He liked the lack of certainty, the great sprawl of differing paths stretched ahead of him. He liked being lost.

It shouldn't hurt like this, but maybe that was what loneliness did.

Sense soon rushed in to cut the flow of tears, but they were enough to leave his eyes sore and face damp. Too exhausted to bother wiping it, he peered past his arm again at the tiny shape of the city. Mellow calm—ever easily within his grasp, despite the way his thoughts scrabbled and growled beneath its blanket—settled over his limbs and eased the tension in his muscles, but the heaviness in his chest stayed. It wouldn't let him move.