"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
The moment she learned of the coming plague, she began her work. The egg was safe in her nest so long as no one dared to enter her lair, but the safety was too fickle to bet one. So she took the egg, cradled it in her stretching jaws like a mother crocodile introducing her young to the water. Once it was safely tucked into her belly once more, she made her way to the isle and started from scratch.
Her face took the shape of a hognose viper while she dug, building a new cave from scratch. Khuma’s muscles ached in the cold and it took so much more energy to keep her body warm-blooded. But her unborn child depended on her and she couldn’t let him down so long as his heartbeat continued within his shell. When she finally finished, her nose was raw and red from the missing scales, but the new den was warm and the entrance curved to keep out the harsh winter winds.
The final step was plucking dried grasses from the surrounding region to weave into a bed for her egg. Occasionally she entertained the idea of napping in her half-made nest but her instincts vetoed the notion quickly. No rest until her baby was safe, she told herself with half-lidded eyes.
As the sun set on the horizon, she rebirthed her egg in the center of the new home. She was exhausted from her work and only managed to coil around it loosely this time before sleep overtook her.
- - -
A sliver of morning light manages to reach the underground chamber, signaling the start of the day. There are voices in the distance but she feels no need to join them for the time being. She is not one of them, not really. None of them sound like Wane anyhow. She’d nearly forgotten her lover in her frenzy to protect their egg, she realizes with a small pang of guilt.
Khuma slithers toward the entrance of her den, shifting along the way. Her limbs unfold from her bending spine until she’s walking on her hooves once more. The serpent girl’s red and black head peeks from the nursery to search for his face among the strangers, but she’s careful to remain mostly unseen. (As though the mound of dirt all around the entrance isn’t a dead giveaway. But never mind that.)
One moment he is being torn apart by ice and wind, and the next he is not.
When he rouses at last in the meadow the skin is still hot across his cheeks where only hours earlier the ice had split his flesh, only now, there are no injuries and just the slow burn that lingers long enough to tell him it was real (all of it — the contagion, the fairies, Eszka, Khuma.). There is a warm wind, not unlike the one that had brought him back from freezing along the Isle’s shoreline, and it sweeps across the length of his back where it tangles when it meets the mats and icicles now dangling haphazardly off his mane and tail, further proof of his journey.
Slowly, he blinks and looks around.
It is evident by his surroundings alone that he has chosen the wrong path, inadvertently or not. What is less clear is what has become of everyone else; were Briella and Eszka safe? He intends in the next moment to go after them (of course he does), but reality settles on his skin like the snow had before. He is so inauspiciously far from them now that all he can do for them is hope. So, with disappointment heavy on his shoulders, he begins the arduous journey home again — or rather, beyond it, back to the Isle.
Suddenly, it has never been more apparent to him why Texas had grown tired of the redundancy here.
It’s days later that he finally arrives in Nerine, where it costs him another to spend a healthy amount of time hunting the caves in order to establish that Wax is no longer anywhere to be found. It is exactly like her, he thinks, to wander off in spite of his instructions, and so when he combs his memory he determines that another likely conclusion is that she is off risking her health to adventure now with the likes of Magnus, or Ilma, both whom they had met only briefly in the meadow. If it were dangerous, truly dangerous, he reasons, she would know to keep her head low somewhere that she was safe. If she were too stubborn, Magnus or Ilma would surely reign her in.
That’s what he tells himself, at least, in order to keep going and not double-back for her, too — because he’s trying, and desperately so, not to realize that now he has lost them all.
So, with his head low in an effort to dodge a vengeful wind Wane follows the same path through Nerine that he had travelled with Eszka in search of Khuma the first time. He reaches the icy shore in record time, and he plunges on ahead without rest, swimming those same frigid waters to land himself on the same opposite shoreline he had found days earlier. Before today he has never been so grateful for the life he lived on the sea, because whether he had known it or not he’d been training his entire existence for this.
When at last the Isle shoreline is firmly underfoot there is no warm wind to bring him home from freezing this time, and the chill cuts him to his bones. In spite of a body begging for rest Wane makes every effort to sweep the beach for the two paths he had been shown earlier in an attempt to carry on with the mission the fairies had set forth, and find Eszka on his way (or what is left of her, though he has high hopes that the fairies will have been just as merciful to her, too), but they are lost to freshly fallen snow, or even likelier, disappeared at the whims of those same fairies.
It is then that he turns his attention, sequentially, to Khuma. There are no lingering snake trails, likely thanks to the previous snowfall, but Wane scours the landing again in spite of his own better judgement. Here, he thinks, would have been a great place to leave behind a shed or two (but no, always in the cave). Finally defeated, Wane sets off in the only direction he decides is feasible, and if he has learned anything at all about Khuma in the time that they had spent together and all of the ceaseless decisions that had gone into her careful selection of their Nerinian cave, he will still choose the best route to her.
So, freezing, alone, and in the dark he walks, searching. He walks until the water on his skin freezes, and his limbs feel oddly hot. He walks until icicles form and fall, built from the condensation of his breath. He walks until the night finally melts away, yielding to a brighter dawn at last. And there before him, illuminated by the fragile veil of morning light, he sees at last what he has been searching for.
He doesn’t know what waits for him as he approaches the mouth of the cave, but he hopes it will be alive and well.
“Khuma?” He says into the frozen air, and he holds his breath and waits.
She watches her surroundings with a detached sort of interest, like a child observing a spider as it crafts its web. Her ears swivel back and forth to catch the sounds of the Isle as life continues on around her. A sudden crackle, however, makes her stand up straight with her ears strained to listen. The sound is so faint it scarcely reaches her until it is followed by another just like it. The egg. She ducks back into her lair and hurries to the perfect cradle of her son, searching its smooth white surface for imperfections. Was it time? She presses her ear gently to the shell and listens to the quiet scraping of newly formed hooves.
Her heart leaps against her ribs and she begins to pace, nervous breath clouding before her lips. She wants to rip the egg apart to free her precious son but she knows this is a trial he must overcome on his own. The first hurdle will tell her everything she needs to know about him. Khuma nervously chews the inside of her lip as she tries her best to remain calm.
‘Khuma?’
Her head snaps toward the mouth of her den and she rushes to greet the intruder, teeth bared and hissing violently. This is when their son is most vulnerable, when his protection is an absolute necessity. Khuma’s instincts react before she can recognize him, she realizes with her ears still pinned tight against her skull. But it is only Wane, the only other creature she’d allow into their burrow at such a vital time. Her lips curl back over her teeth and her ears turn slowly forward as she calms, heart still hammering against her chest.
“It’s hatching,” she whispers hurriedly before bumping her lips against his nose apologetically. A joyful smile finds her lips and the expression illuminates the soft features of her face just as she ducks back into the nest. Khuma casts a brief glance over her shoulder to see if he follows her. The first shard of the egg’s shell has fallen to the ground and she can see a little black and white leg struggling to free itself. Even in the dim light, her eyes shimmer with delighted tears.
The rest of the pieces begin to crumble and finally a perfect colt cries weakly, bits of shell clinging to his back and mane as he blinks. Khuma hurries closer to pick the debris from him and begin cleaning his face. Her lips kiss along his small face delicately as she admires their beautiful son, turning only briefly to look at Wane. Salvage is a perfect blend of each of them, she thinks with a proud smile.
“Salvage, my perfect son,” she whispers against his cheek. “You’re as handsome as I always imagined.”
When is it that the lines of her face rearranged and became synonymous with ‘home’?
Because, suddenly, her face is the lighthouse that leads him to shore. Because even though she snakes out of the cave with a flash of teeth, pinned ears, and the low whisper of a hiss falling out between her parted lips he has never felt relief quite like this. He laughs, and the sound is throaty and unexpected. He can’t help himself, and as an easy smile finds his mouth even after miles on miles of walking his shoulders seem to drop an invisible anchor he had been carrying across them since he’d first discovered Khuma missing from Nerine.
This meeting, this moment, is the culmination of all of his dramatic efforts seeing fruition at last.
At home on those kingdom shores he’d been unsure, smothered even, and he had grown resentful for it. He hadn’t liked catering to anyone beyond himself, and especially not someone with such a tendency towards carnivory. That all melts away as Khuma bumps his nose in a way he hadn’t realised he’d been missing until now.
“It’s hatching,” she says, and Wane at last remembers the egg (surprisingly he had forgotten, despite its contents leaving him reeling awake a thousand nights before this one). When she turns to lead him back into the cave and cranes her neck to look at him from across her shoulders he is drinking the sight of her in like wine. He remembers the rain in the meadow; empires rising and falling.
Of course he follows her.
He would have followed her anywhere.
Wane arrives at the cave’s cradle just in time to see the last pieces of shell fall from the slick side of their newly born child. A horse, he is thrilled to discover, though there are parts of him that are still wondering if the teeth inside its mouth are sharp or blunted (and, consequently, what that means it will eat). There is no great wave of paternal instinct that washes over him. He isn’t like Khuma, who wraps around the fragile being like she was made for it (and she is; a devoted mother from the second they learned she was to be one — even he can acknowledge the magnitude of that).
“Salvage, my perfect son,” he listens to her say against a tiny cheek.
“You’re as handsome as I always imagined.”
Still, there is a small something in him that blooms for the foal. A fondness, perhaps, because while the child looked like Khuma in colouring his build was lanky and angular like Wane’s. Perhaps it is only his ego at play again, nonetheless, he is proud.
“You’re more handsome than I imagined,” Wane quips with a crooked grin, thinking again of all the moments he had wondered what exactly (eggsactly?) that egg had contained. Suddenly sober, he looks up at Khuma again, the smile dead on his lips and the gravity of his failure showing in his shoulders. He found them, certainly, but they weren’t safe. They were still so far from safe.
“Khuma,” he says, quietly, as though if he is too loud the sound of his voice will shatter the beauty of this calm moment.
“I came as quickly as I could. The world’s falling apart out there.”
