02-11-2016, 03:17 PM
is crowded w/ lovers & searchers
& leavers so eager to please & forget.
He loves and hates the way it smells like sea spray here. It’s why he chose this place, precipitous as it is. He is attracted to the smell of salt water and the sound of the ocean well below.
It is a lullaby to him; it is a thing yanked from memory and somehow it is both beautiful and unwelcome.
Saltwater he can tolerate. Sand is different, but there is none of that here.
Maybe far down at the feet of the steep, glittering wall of rock and semi-precious stone. When he peers down, as he does often (he finds it calming and thrilling – when the moon falls in cut up slivers on the water’s surface and he stands over that wild frontier, eyes closed, the power of it washing over and over his skin with a tide), he can see a thin line of beach off to both sides. But directly below, all up and down the edge of the Ridge, the cliff dives straight down like a swan into the ocean, sending up a spray of jagged rocks and turbid water.
Nothing soft to catch anyone’s fall here.
He stops, just as the path of rock (and rock worn down to the dust) breaks along the sides with grass. He squints down as that well-worn footpath, as it cuts through their home and disappears out of his line of sight. Alone, or not (not anymore – that’s something), but they are without audience here, at least. Chessur twists his neck back to eye the colt, still muzzling his belly and thigh, searching hopelessly. He shifts his weight and pushes the boy away, turning around to catch him before he moves again to look for milk and something motherly. “Quit it,” it is a strained groan, tired, thin and shaken. He still cannot get a sense of his thoughts, they are garbled and babbling – first ‘hungry’, now ‘where’s ma’.
Nothing he can help him with, really.
But even if the sight of him marching the babe through Beqanna, constantly checking back to see if he has fallen or drifted, was tragic at best, he is not totally stupid. Untried, yes. He has no children (Kidd… he has Kidd, in some kind of way, yet to be figured out), but he knows what they need.
He turns back to squint along the horizon. Still alone. “Here,” he whispers, moving around the boy and licking from his angles the spatter of blood. It is rusty and unpleasant, and he realizes quite quickly that he cannot clean it all. He cannot clean it all like this. The boy needs a rain or a good soak. His right side is crusted, in places still shiny and wet, with blood. “Damnit.”
It had been his hope that he could get him perfect before he found Merope.
It is enough that he would have him at all, but in this state... She doesn’t need to know anything. Birth itself can be messy.
The boy trots at his side, bumping up and down and now his mind is surly and meandering (he is ‘hungry’, and he is ‘tired’ and he is confused; he is wanting to look at the water and show ma the colours). Until both hear the sound of hooves and they are relieved and curious in equal measure.
“Merope,” he tries to keep his voice even and relaxed. “This is... I found him,” he shifts away so the colt is better seen. He smiles, but it is belied by everything. By the blood on the boy and by the sleep in his eyes. He can only hope he can answer her questions sufficiently. She does not need to know. He needs to keep it down, though it threatens to rise up in his throat with bile.
Trashlip and Phina's
BASE BY BRONZEHALO