He watches her fight, for a moment. She is glorious, in this moment – well, she is always glorious, but this is new, this is savage, and even with everything else, even with his adrenaline pumping and monsters god-knows-where, he is transfixed, for a moment.
He could die happy, watching her.
But there is no time for watching, before there is movement and another cry – this one high and keening, almost mournful, a cry that he feels skittering along his nerves. The creature that flashes out, that slips past Agetta’s fearsome teeth and claws, is whippet-thin but it’s fast, and then something is burning at his leg, and he looks back, stunned to see the skin torn, flapping ghoulishly against his pastern. His body reacts before his mind does, and he moves, trying to keep the river to his side, but there is movement up ahead and there are more of them, he’s penned in, and his leg feels strange now, dragging, an object foreign to him, and he is slow, stupidly slow.
So he does the only thing he can do.
He once followed a woman into the ocean. He once shouted the names of those he loved, those he wronged (often the same), some meager attempt at atonement. He was ready to die, then, the whole affair well overdue.
He follows no one into the river, but he goes there nonetheless. Knee-deep, than belly-deep, and then his feet barely touch the bottom. The current moves him and the water’s cold, but his leg feels better, numbing now, and he drifts and the monsters aren’t coming and all he can do is hope that she will turn back into the eagle and rise up, away from them, and he will see her fly.
In the ocean, he didn’t fight.
In the river, he does.
He moves his legs, tries to control his motion. The current is stronger than he thought. Something crashes against his ribs – a rock, maybe – and suddenly it’s even harder to breathe, even when he gets his nose above water the very act of drawing a breath is like knives, and the water’s colder and colder and then not so cold at all anymore.
He can’t see the sky through the rushing water, but he imagines he sees an eagle flying there, anyway.
@[Agetta]