Among the Birches *NaNoWriMo 2013*

The Plain That Lies West

The scenery outside of Tarazen did not much change. The desert stretched on far past Tarazen, they all knew, and Fratyra would be just as dry and hot-- though much darker. The rare cactus or palm provided small snacks for the group, including the horses, who especially loved the fleshy skin of the fruit of a short palm with whispy fronds. They'd pull clumps of them off with their mouthes as they passed them by and chew them until the seeds within were all that remained, and then the horses would simply allow them to fall from their mouth. In years to come, these seeds would sprout into more palms, and it would be called a beautiful name-- but as Kya, Nicholai, Fjorn, and Jasper trod through, it was nameless and nearly featureless.

"Are you actually used to this?" Nicholai asked Fjorn after half the day had worn through. "The hot, the dearth of green, the perpetually parched feeling in your mouth?"

"Yes," he answered. "To me, your greenery and cold seem unusual. I can't understand how you all could bear the bundling-up, the frozen landscape, and the deluge of greens. The sun elves love their land and its reds, yellows, and browns."

"It's still odd," said Nicholai. "It'd be alright, I suppose, if there were just more water..."

"You will adjust," said Jasper. "But do not think of it-- we must ration, or we will die in Fratyra having accomplished nothing."

The group became silent again, but only for a short while. Nicholai and Fjorn struck up an engrossing conversation regarding humans and elves, the two horses which Nicholai and Kya had rented in Trenton had a grunting conversation with the new horse, Cinnamon; and Jasper and Kya whispered into each other's ears. Everyone talked primarily to ignore the danger which they grew closer and closer to. The desert stretched on and on, and the day was exceedingly long. When they finally stopped for the evening, having had no need for a true lunch break due to their on-the-road snacking, the starts that had risen in the sky made everything still seem light. They knew that soon they would come to a darker place which would, ultimately, turn into a kind of black hole that would destroy the possibility of illumination, and their hearts grew heavier. 

Most effected by the dread was Nicholai. Kya and Jasper had come to rely upon one another's presence and were heartened by it; Fjorn had resigned himself totally weeks before to death or an attempt of the kind he was going to be a part of. But all Nicholai had were memories of Vivienne and a strong fear that perhaps she was no longer even living. He took to talking to her, but he couldn't conjure up her replies; he realized that all the words he attributed to her imagined form were really just a weak attempt of his own to animate what was actually a corpse. He wanted to be a seer, like Jasper, to look into her welfare from afar; or he wanted to be like Kya, whose only personal attachment was to Jasper. He wanted to be like either Kya or Jasper to feel loved again.

They slept next to each other now, he saw. They were lying next to each other on top of a thick blanket and were covered in a threadbare, almost translucent sheet to keep cool in the nighttime heat. They were not asleep; they were each lying on their backs and staring into the immense, star-dotted canvas above them. Like he, they were silent, but he suspected that her elf blood and his half-elf blood allowed for a kind of telepathy between the two. He could see his hand moving under the sheet, caressing circles onto Kya's.

It had been days and days since they had first set out, and Nicholai was distraught. His wife, he thought, may not have even been alive on the day that Kya had told Lavin of the Island's disappearance; but if she had been, there was even less of a chance now. He did not believe, really, that she was still breathing, thinking, praying, and pleading miles and miles away in the deep darkness of Fratyra. But neither did he really believe her to be dead. It seemed to him that she had simply been wholly and totally transported away from where he could ever see or touch her again, much less continue to wrench her heart in half. To herself, she would be alive; to him, she would be more than dead-- she would have been taken so far away from him that he could not even walk the earth, looking for the remnants of her. He couldn't bear to think of it or feel the surging emotions which buried him in deep, but he was powerless. He could not escape being wracked with the guilt, fear, and loneliness which had transpired out of his mindless and selfish actions.