you can't get struck by lightning
if you're not dancing in the rain
The sounds of the Jungle echo around them in a variety of noises so loud it might be catastrophic. They are the sounds of home — the jaguar’s growl, the birds’ assortments of trills and caws and hoots and songs, the hum of waterfalls, the wind rustling through the highest points of the trees — and his mind feels the sweetness of relief at their familiarity. It’s a perfect Amazon day, warm and humid against his skin, and he audibly sighs as the coolness of the stream licks against his heels.
A kiss is pressed against his strong red shoulder. Her mouth is as familiar to him as the sounds of the Jungle, if not more. Above the Jungle that curls around them, above the northern kingdom that will chill them eventually, she is home. He feels a smile tug at his lips, bright and sunny against the shade they stand nestled under. He turns his head, and she is there — his flame-wife, rippling with muscle and the bright shades of her fire. “Ti amo, mio fuoco.” His voice is low and rumbling as his mouth travels from her cheek down her neck.
She laughs, free of worry and drunk on love, and he soaks it in. But then her laughter becomes roughened and jumbled as if he were hearing her from underwater. It grows louder until it cancels out the sounds of the Jungle and then it grows louder still until he can’t hear his own thoughts (which must surely be screaming for her to “Stop!”). His eyes snap shut and his body tenses, hoping that it will all just stop.
Hestoni’s eyes snap open so violently his head hits against the roof of the cavern. Everything is dimly-lit and hazy, with light only barely filtering through the entrance. He realizes he’s in a cavern with a sloping end to it, much like a tunnel or — and he shudders slightly — a tomb. The red stallion takes a few slow steps forward, wincing with each one, to reach the supposed mouth of his resting place. A wall of snow and ice has built up against the entrance, only furthering along his thoughts of the tomb, and Hestoni wastes no time to push through it with his broad shoulders.
He immediately realizes Beqanna is not how he left it. Winter is upon Nerine, where before they had been in the midst of an unnaturally warm summer. The smoke from Tephra’s volcano lingers in the western distance when it had been found on the eastern horizon the last time he’d been awake. Worry forms tight, deep knots in the pit of Hestoni’s stomach. The red stallion wastes no time in racing up the embankment to search the empty plateau for Scorch, hellbent on determining just how long he’s been asleep.
On any other day, Hestoni might have waited to call his wife’s name until it was absolutely necessary. But this bizarre situation grips him with fear so deep and impatient that he cries her name into the wintery sky without concern for what business she might be dealing with. The worry and confusion and fear is caught in the rough call in his throat and it forces Hestoni to keep moving, making his way across the Nerinian landscape in search of Scorch.
Hestoni
@[Scorch]