all things are possible,
even the worst of things

Change is inevitable. He has always known this. Nevertheless, it always seems to come so unexpectedly. Impressively so.

His home is gone, lost to vast oceans brought forth by even more powerful magic. He had won and he had lost, but none of it is what he had chosen. No, he had wanted simplicity. Sanctuary.

He had wanted life and love and family. And he had had it. Still has it, but somehow it is not the same. It is different. Different and new and strange, like an ill fitting glove he cannot quite wriggle his hand into.

The earth had changed, heaving and splitting, even as a massive hand of pure magic had swept them from their homes, from their very feet. And it had scolded, the owner of that hand, charged them with hubris, stripped them of their talents, of their gifts (and of their curses). And it had tossed them back with a final warning.

Now he stands here amongst the white drifts if the winter meadow, struggling to comprehend the reality of their new world. His first thought, his only coherent thought, in the writhing sea of his mind is her. His love.

”Ilka.” He utters her name like a prayer, unable to do anything else.

shahrizai

hestoni x scorch

all things are possible,
even the worst of things

Sometimes he thinks he has loved her forever (sometimes, when the wind blows just right, and the clouds hang exactly so in the skies, the past, before her, doesn’t exist). Sometimes he believes that this will last forever, that they will not grow old, that their faces will not gray and their bones weary. But then the world reasserts itself. He is reminded that time does not stand still, even for them. He is reminded that everything always changes.

For these reasons (and so many more) he clings to her. His beautiful Ilka, the one constant, steadfast and whole, that he can cling to in such turbulent times. His strength only remains great because of her, because she is there bolstering him.

So when she is not there, when she is thrown from him like wood in a stormy tide, his chest feels hollow and raw. His breath aches inside his lungs, not just from icy cold, but from loss and crushing fear. It is a different kind of fear, different from the one that had clung to him when he had returned to find the deserts washed away by an ocean. It is different because the world is, because there is nothing else familiar to cling to in this infant land.

He has to find her. There is simply no other option. He is not certain if he can live without her anymore.

But somehow, some way, she comes like the miracle she is. He is not certain if it is the way he had sent her name winging in the wind, or if it is simply because they are drawn to each other by some mysterious, magnetic force, but she is there, materializing out of the snow.

He turns to the sound of his name, reaching for her even as she does for him, as she presses into the hollow of his neck and chest. She feels so familiar there, so perfectly right. He wraps her tightly into his embrace, unwilling to let her go. Pressing his dark nose into her mane, warming the ice beaded there until it melts between them, he simply holds her for a moment.

His heart clenches at her words. Had he the power, he would make her world whole again, would give her everything she so richly deserves. But he does not, and it crushes his heart all over again. ”Ilka.” He breathes her name into her neck. ”I know. I’m so sorry.”

But he would always be here for her. That much would never change.

For now though, in this very moment, his first concern is her safety. She is here, tucked securely against him, but they are in the open, exposed. ”We should find some shelter.”

shahrizai

hestoni x scorch