The Wandering God

11 Spread Out to the East and West 2/2

各奔東西
gèbēndōngxī
Spread out east west
To part ways

*~*~*~*~*~*

I didn't feel like traveling anymore that day. Instead, I bought a bottle of wine and headed to the sea to drink it.

"A bastard, huh?" I pondered to myself. My old habits were starting to come back. Specifically talking to no one and drinking at unusual hours.

I found a spot, secluded by the cliffs, with one scraggly pine tree stretching from a crevice in the rocks overhead to provide some shade, and settled myself on a stone, smoothed by waves and warmed in patches by the sun. It was only midday, but I didn't care. I downed the bottle without bothering to contemplate the taste and soon fell into a drunken sleep.

When I woke, it was twilight. A crab scuttled up my arm, claws catching at the cotton of the shirt that I had taken from the herbalist. I flicked it off and it landed in the sand, waved its claws, and then headed toward the dark sea.

I sat up and cracked my stiff neck. My head pounded. Ugh, I was already regretting my decision to drink.

The waves had come closer, and were crashing nearby now, the sound loud in my ears. The water was black, the surf white and fringed the water in like lace. The stone beneath me was still warm, but the breeze from the ocean was quickly cooling it off.

I expected to see fog coming off the ocean, but the wind was too strong. I opened my mouth and tasted salt on the air.

Leaving my things, shoes included, on the rock, I walked down to the water, sinking my toes into the sand. I stopped just close enough for the tips of the waves to brush against my toes before they retreated back into the sea, hissing across the sand.

The ocean was one of the things that reminded me the most of what I had lost. What I had told Kageyama that day in the forest had been true, though of course he hadn't believed me. I was, or rather had been, a dragon. A Dalong. A creature of the sea, born from the waves. Swimming through the ocean deeps had been as natural to me as walking a road was to men.

Now, the memories of those dark, swirling abysses, filled my stomach with cold fear.

My husband, the fisherman, had gone to sea each day, and each day, I had wondered if he would return to our bed that night or spend that night and every night after tucked beneath the waves.

How unexpected he died of illness in the end. Safe and warm in our bed.

I knew how treacherous the ocean could be. How fickle. How cold. When I was still a Dalong, I had been one of her creatures, and had no need to fear her. Now, I was an outsider.

A wave broke, larger than the others, and the water shot up the sand and reached up to my ankles. As it retreated, the tendrils of the wave dragged sand and smaller rocks back down into the sea like a greedy, jealous lover.

Time to go.

I decided I wanted company for the evening. I returned to my rock, brushing my sandy feet off before sliding them onto the cool wood of my shoes. Then I swung my pack, lute, drinking gourd and umbrella over my shoulder and turned back to the town, the sound of the ocean fading behind me.

*~*~*~*~*~*

I finally started to spend some of the money Kageyama had left me with. I checked into the nicest inn in town, paid to have a bath run, then cleaned myself off.

Thankfully, since Zakhar had been carrying my things when the bandits had taken me, the only thing I had had to replace was my drinking gourd. Everything else had been waiting for me downstairs at the herbalist's house.