maybe you were the ocean
Wane does not bother to replace the look of satisfaction that finds his features with one of feigned and casual placidity upon Wax’s decision. Nor does he think to swallow his obvious derision when he passes Magnus, nearly close enough to brush his shoulder in the exchange, and says: “Later, Magnus.” All that Wane concerns himself here in the meadow is escorting his sister home to Nerine, and shooting Ilma a casual wink on the way out that he means only half as earnestly as it appears.
It would never work out between them with Khuma at home, anyways.
As it would turn out the trip to Nerine is a far shorter one when you don’t spend it behind the swinging hips of a lover in autumn, because Wane and Wax arrive in what feels like record timing. Neither talks about what’s happened to them, about how a three year gap could exist in the span of a mere twelve hour difference. Perhaps they should, but for now Wane is content just with her half-moon footfalls beside him. Instead of asking her where she’s been he makes jokes at Magnus’ expense, not quite able to let him exist behind them yet, and nipping her shoulders to punctuate anything he finds particularly clever.
Not once does he wonder about the unsettling quiet on their arrival into the kingdom; how he can hear the wind whistling through the somber branches of trees, but not the gentle hum of life beyond it. He is still reeling in his meadow victory to notice, but beyond that, the cacophony of Nerine has always felt small next to the deafening roar of the ocean. He loses himself here, and when he can at last see the granite cliffs falling into the sea like a lover’s arms beyond them, when the waves break again and again and again on the rocks, all that he can manage to think is that he hopes Wax will like it, too — that she’ll stay and he won’t have to ache in her absence again.
He doesn’t feel the contagion — how it settles in between the fine hair on their skin, how it burrows in to take root at the core of everything it touches; every molecule, every atom.
All he feels is the sea breeze as it whips his mane and stings his eyes until they tear up at their corners while the pair descends down a rocky incline carved neatly into the granite cliff face. Sometimes Wax crosses in front of a particularly bland piece of granite, and Wane notices how jarring the juxtaposition of her skin against it can be — but that’s all he notices, not the sickness. And at last, when they arrive at the cave entrance and Wane cannot help himself but to hesitate, as he always does (a silly tic, perhaps, because he always goes in anyways), wondering after Khuma’s state inside he doesn’t feel that anything has changed.
He imagines she has likely tasted the air and knows that Wax has joined him long before he will ever get the chance to tell her for himself. There is some relief in that, he thinks, and perhaps she would look like a horse for once in the name of putting on airs.
He doesn’t see it there, settling around them in between specks of dust and ocean debris.
Sickness.
All he sees is the cave, as it was a hundred times before this time — adorned with shells and pearls and fragments of bone. Here and there the scant trace of a ‘shed’ is visible, but Khuma is generally careful to keep a tidy roost and nothing screams out at him as particularly out of place. Upon entering, however, there are two minute differences that Wane recognizes almost instantaneously. The cave is empty — no Khuma, no egg. He eyes the empty cradle with increasing bewilderment, and finally he says to his sister:
“It was just here.”
@[Wax]