Monday, October 23, 2017

Red in Tooth and Flame 6

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.

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