An Affinity For Fire

30. Malbaryn

Bryn squinted against the heavy spattering of rain, watching the grey waves writhe towards the shore. When Clover had mentioned over breakfast that she'd never been to a beach, he'd offered to take her to one out of hostly courtesy, expecting her to take one look at the weather and politely decline. He wasn't sure if he was impressed or disappounted by her enthusiastic acceptance.

"I'll be honest," she called out, battling to be heard over the wind, "When I imagined what I thought the sea would look like ... this isn't what I was seeing in my head."

Bryn laughed. "Let me guess - clear blue sky, glistening, flat, turquoise sea, maybe a dolphin or two leaping across the horizon?"

"Something like that," she admitted.

Bryn tugged his sheepskin coat a little tighter around himself. "Painters tend to favour a more flattering representation of the scenes they capture. I've never been to Ortus but the paintings I've seen suggest that it's sunny all the time and there are bluebirds everywhere. I can imagine that's less than accurate."

Clover smirked. "Replace sunny with permanently cloudy and bluebirds with sheep and you're getting somewhere. Must be nice here during the summer, though."

He shrugged. "We get so much rain blowing in from over the sea, it's usually hard to differentiate between the seasons. I'll tell you what, though, if it clears up at all later, you should come back and see the sunset."

She turned away from the raging sea and narrowed her eyes at him. "At nightfall? Aren't there sirens here?"

"Not on this beach," he reassured her, "Too stony for sirens. Although, that's a good point. You should avoid the beach right out the front of my house. They swarm around there like you wouldn't believe. Hideous pests."

"Can't you just cull them?" she asked.

"Sadly not, no. There's some compound in their saliva that acts as a sedative. They use it to immobilise their prey, but in smaller doses, it has a lot of medical uses. They're protected by law, so we can't kill them unless they're causing a direct threat to human life."

"Wait, so you can buy their saliva? What about other parts? A whole tongue, for instance?"

He furrowed his brow, confused and a little frightened by her enthusiasm. "No... tongues don't have any uses. Well, none that I'm aware of, atl east. Why?"

She dropped her gaze, a hint of disappointment in her green eyes, and shrugged. "Just... wondered if there was anything you could make out of them. You know, like some weird delicacy."

"Believe me," Bryn said with a slight grimace, "There are more than enough unusual fish-based delicacies without having to add sirens' tongues to the list."

The wind picked up even more. He wiped a thick layer of water from his face.

"Well, as pleasant as this has been," he said, "I really should be heading for the stables. Onyx get's angsty when he's hungry."

Clover nodded. "I'll come too, our half-breeds could do with some meat. They haven't had much to eat for the past few days."

Bryn bit his lip, embarrassed. "Well, actually ... Onyx has to be kept in a different stable from the horses and half-breeds."

"Oh, alright," she said with an unperturbed smile. "We can go there first."

"I'm not sure that's wise," he said. She stepped back, features twisting in a slightly insulted frown. "Oh, no I just mean-" He sighed. "Well ... have you ever seen a kelpie before?"

Her eyebrows crept up, lips curling into a curious grin. "You have a kelpie."

He nodded, opting to leave out the detail that Onyx was, strictly speaking, owned by his father. It was an annoying technicality that he didn't enjoy advertising.