she’s got jumper cable lips
she’s got sunset on her breath. now i inhaled just a little bit, now i’ve got no fear of death

It’s as if she blinks her eye and in the milliseconds of darkness she soars across miles.

When Wishbone’s eyes open, they land upon the expanse of the ocean stretching ahead of her feet. It’s cool on the shoreline, instantly soothing the sweat that dampens her exhausted body. She aches all over, but the thrill of suddenly opening her eyes to find a new place pushes the pain away momentarily. Dusk is beginning to settle across the northern kingdom, casting her portion of the beach in a hazy twilight glow.

You need to find Scorch.

It’s an intense thought, so deeply rooted and bold it nearly slips out of her own mouth. A tug — like a tether of instinct, firm and rugged — in her stomach guides her toward the forest in the center of Nerine, one Wishbone has adventured through many times before. Although the mahogany girl loves the ocean (the water is much chillier than Tephra’s southern sea but the rhythm of the waves and the sureness of the tides is intensely familiar to her childhood), she finds her feet turning in the sand to head up the nearby embankment to reach a plateau.

It is while she is winding between patches of rugged beach grass that a faint blue mist appears. It kisses her bruised body, cool and silky against her long legs. A whisper of her name rides upon the mist’s face and the voice it belongs to is as familiar as her own. Her best friend’s face comes to her mind — the angles of his golden and navy face, the handsome way his fangs poke from beneath his lips, the ivory of his high mane style — and in the same moment, almost as if someone had peered into the crevices of her mind, Wolfbane appears in front of her.

The mist slides away from his cheep chest and ivory feathers, giving the appearance that he has been born from it. A smile finds Wishbone’s mouth, deliriously pleased that her best friend has come to join her on her quest to find Scorch. In her exhaustion and soreness, she doesn’t question the arrival of his presence, merely glad to find him here. Wolfbane being here with her has already soothed some of the pain from her muscles.

“Wolfbane! I’m so glad to see you here.” The girl steps forward, her nose finding his in a greeting, but when she moves back she notices the blood dripping from his neck. They’re superficial wounds, sliced along the golden of his neck and across his shoulders, but they soak his legs and chest in red liquid nonetheless. “Fuck, Bane, what happened?”

He’s stumbling toward her and his angular cheeks seem hollow. There’s a void in his eyes, as though he’s seen something so terribly dreadful that it will haunt his sleeping moments for the rest of his life. “You need to leave Nerine.” His voice is breathy and rough, as if he has been running and screaming for miles. He doesn’t tell her it is dangerous because, surely, she would run toward the danger. There’s urgency in his eyes though, amid the empty fear, and his mouth opens to offer another word of warning. “More will come and tell you the same.”

As quickly as he arrives, he is gone. Wolfbane takes flight into the sky and fades into the dusk (Wishbone’s eyes do not see the way he disintegrates into a fine blue mist), leaving the mahogany girl in a state of confusion and bewilderment. Her feet seem to be glued to the ground, amid beach-grass and rough granite-rock, and it isn’t but a moment after Wolfbane has left that another arrives. Warrick is swaddled in the same blue haze that the previous had been and it matches the cerulean in his gaze. Wishbone finds herself racing into the familiar embrace of her father, melting into his deep chest. “Dad! What’s happening?” The swirl of emotions thick in her chest are too muddled to pick apart.

She pulls away for a moment to evaluate her father’s face. Warrick has the fine skill of censoring his emotions away from his face, but his family has always been able to pick apart the small ticks in his face. Yet Wishbone’s eyes land upon blood — blood like Wolfbane — cascading down her father’s face, cloaking his face entirely until all she can see is the blue of his eyes. “Oh, God!” She’s nearly screaming, amber eyes searching out the source of the bloodshed.

“You need to leave Nerine.” His voice is just as breathless and rugged as Wolfbane’s had been, his gaze holding that same nightmarish expression, and dread rips through Wishbone like a bitter hurricane. “Why? Dad, what happened?” Her questions receive no answers because Warrick is murmuring, “More will come and tell you the same,” and taking to the skies.

He too fades into a blue mist her worried eyes do not catch.

More come, as numerous as the constellations above, and they are all faces she knows. Trekori and Solace and Wound and Lepis and Ivar and Kagerus and Khaedrik — all with blood drowning some inch of their body, all with the same words upon their lips, all looking as though they have seen the ugly, shadowed face of death. Wishbone stops asking questions by the third bloodied face. She remembers Scorch by the sixth.

When she begins to move toward the pine forest — Khaedrik’s blood-freckled mouth kissing her hip with the words “You need to leave Nerine” upon his tongue — the blue mist is thick and heavy, clouding her vision and hiding the trail leading to the forest. A frustrated scream leaves Wishbone’s mouth and she wheels to meet Ivar’s stricken eyes. “Leave me alone!” It’s an angry cry, fueled by the confusion and rage of seeing so many friends and family destroyed by blood and untold horror.

As her voice fades into the early night, they all arrive. All those who have come before and all those who might’ve come after swarm her like thunderclouds on a spring day and they are slathered in blood so thick she can barely make out their hazy eyes. It’s silent for a heartbreaking moment (the first silence since they have begun arriving) before their mouths open. Each is speaking aloud, all with the same words, yet they are separated and bounce off one another at different intervals. It is a cacophony of five urgent, rough words.

You need to leave Nerine.

Wishbone turns and runs, stumbling across the plateau and into the heavy mist. It seems to cling to her shoulders and hips, drawing her close like a lover’s embrace, but she pushes away with another wild — and is that terror? — scream. They follow her, hoofbeats sounding like endless thunder, and her pulse is racing so quickly her heart might spring from her chest.

She is not running away from Nerine, but deeper. Despite their words — which now rise to angry shouts — that pierce into her core, Wishbone finds herself searching for Scorch with even deeper purpose. They are right on her heels the entire time and the plateau with the thick blue fog is stretching on and on and she is only running in the same place. She is fed up. Finally, she turns on a dime and pins her ears, anger evident in every sinewy line of her body.

“I will not leave Nerine!”

They disappear and the mist disappears with them. “Oh, my God.” Wishbone stands alone for a moment, her words coming out in a whispering exhale. The stars are shining above her head, illuminating the auburn in her tangled locks. Just in front of her feet, the northern sea laps gentle waves at her feet. She’s sweating but a cool nighttime breeze is drying the dampness from her mahogany sides.

Wishbone hasn’t moved since her eyes had first opened.

With that realization — as shatteringly loud as glass breaking in the middle of a quiet room — the heiress turns and races for the pine tree forest. Exhaustion lines her body, mingling with the pain of her fighting and the soreness of her terror, yet still her long legs move nimbly across Nerine’s landscape until she reaches the very center of the kingdom. A bright light blinds the girl for a moment before she blinks away the lingering surprise.

Wishbone is breathing deeply, fueled by the fear and anger gripping her only moments before, but her lungs calm as Scorch begins speaking. No one is in danger. She doesn’t need to leave Nerine. It was a test. The girl is soothed by these thoughts and she twists her ears toward the speaker as her heart begins a relatively normal pace in her chest. There is a secret they must share, a deep and unannounced one, and Wishbone knows hers with a startling surety.

She speaks first, perhaps because her secret is already upon her tongue or perhaps because she had been the first to arrive. “I am terrified that there will be no more adventures to go on.” She has nightmares of this secret — spinning and drifting where everything is gray and there is only endless rolling hills of nothingness — and woken many nights drenched with the sweat of fear and apprehension. Once they finish, these Leviathans who have gathered, they must pledge.

“By land, sea, and whispers in the wind we remember — the first and last, the sword and shield. By our land and our history, we stand strong in our duty. May the spirits of our predecessors guide and watch over us as we, a proud kingdom, dare to dream of a future with equality. We live by the law: we did, we can, we will.

My people, live a good life and die a better death knowing we conquer those who threaten us. Bound by nothing we lead the future by our history. Remember to always be feared, as we become a shield for the weak.”

Pride swells in her heart, the anger and fear from her bloodied family and friends completely eradicated from her.

wishbone