The sun
comes up and there's no land in sight and Beatrix halts to eat a fish
(Aseka scornfully thinking, as she feels the beak cut through the
soft bones, that they would have taken one more day if they had
thought to enchant that like the weapon it is) and Aseka has nothing
left to give and she's hungry but too tense to eat and she almost
passes out before remembering herself. With a grim unthinking
determination she forces herself to relax and let the magic build
back up as she rests in a state deeper than mere sleep, lying on her
belly on the curve of Beatrix's head, rocked by the firm ceaseless
waves of the open sea.
And
sometime past midday Aseka moves on to more sea, and a diet of wet
walnuts and raw fish, and learning more about boredom than she had
imagined possible. She daydreams of using magic to strengthen Beatrix
and herself and push the wind behind them to travel further, but it
seems irresponsible, not least because if she runs into a big and
hungry enough fish she could be defenseless either way but saving her
strength as much as possible will be better. Still she purges the
salt from far more water than she needs to when she stops to drink,
just so she can wash herself. It occurs to her she's feeling exposed,
so far from any roofs and warm stoves and dry beds, and she berates
herself for being a bad druid. But it takes a little effort to leave
the puddle of clean, slightly warm water and return to wearing cold
wet clothes and moving forward with no goal in sight and being alone.
She pushes some rain clouds out of her path with barely a thought,
she who used to love the rain, and she lets Beatrix slow down to
spare one arm to stroke her back and the top of her head just because
that slick, boneless touch she controls as fully as her own hands
feels a little better than no one touching her at all.
No comments:
Post a Comment