The beach hushes as night closes in.
The waves lap more tenderly against the shore, the swells quieting from their mid-day rage. The seagulls let out their final cries as they find roosts, shaking and flapping their wings at their sides until they are resting comfortably. It becomes so still that he thinks he can hear the crabs scuttling across the sand, emerging from their little burrows to hunt the grainy expanse until sunrise. The stallion bends down to watch one, smiling at the way it brandishes its claws at him and ignoring the twinge in his neck. The creatures here are so strange, he thinks, remembering the opaque globule he’d spotted washing up on the shore earlier. It hadn’t moved once it made it to the beach, but the tendrils attached to it had looked like arms. A hunter, he’d thought, a taker of lives. And then he’d grown sad.
But as Crito watches the crab move on (apparently no longer threatened by the stationary animal looming above him), he’s still glad he’s made it here. He’s glad to feel the sting of the salt air on his face. The spray is warmer here than back home, but it tastes the same on his tongue. It makes the Tundra feel closer than it is. As if the now-impossible journey could be shortened by the appearance of the northern lights in the sky. As if he could hear the bellow of rutting musk oxen in the distance, if only he’d close his eyes and listen. As if he could bring his home here, to the beach, for a final goodbye. He thinks maybe he can make it to the water before the sun rises; he wonders if he’ll last that long.
Surely the heated, southern waters will be a balm to his aching joints, Crito takes a step forward. His twisted left leg screams in protest as it holds more of his weight. He tries not to remember how it came to be this way. But the flash-memory of his accident springs forth in his mind. The snaking vine. The pit he hadn’t seen. The fall and the snap -
The bay roan’s stomach lurches at the phantom pain of that day. A pain which is now less sharp but constant; a pain that he can no longer tolerate.
Lagertha hadn’t found him that day or in the subsequent days of misery and hunger. He’d recovered (as much as an ancient, sway-backed stallion could), but he knew he would forever be crippled. He didn’t want his child to see its father like this. He didn’t want it to associate its sire with the broken shell of the man he’d become. And the Khaleesi?
He didn’t love her.
What he felt for the grey lady wasn’t anything close to love. What he felt was admiration in its highest degree. What he saw when he looked at her was an unshakable iron pillar (he’d certainly leaned on her more than he’d like to admit, more than he told her, even). What he believed was that she was unyielding in her convictions and firm in her actions. She could do no wrong, because everything she did was transparent; all of her motivations were plain to see with the naked eye. If he couldn’t read them, well, that was either his fault or the fault of his ever-dimming eyes.
He didn’t love her, but hell, he’d miss her.
Crito takes another step, but now he is certain he will not make it to the water. “How stupid,” he shakes his head, his tangled black mane falling across his thin neck. A tingling has spread up from his wasted foreleg. It prickles like it has fallen asleep, but he thinks it is not such a benign symptom. Because a heat like infection follows it, traveling throughout his body. He hadn’t thought the cut stretching along his canon had been much to worry about (the very real threat of having only three legs had seemed more pressing at the time), but now, he knows that worrying will no longer help. “Buck up, old man,” he grumbles, determination and despair hitting him in waves.
Just to the water, then everything will feel better.
But after a few excruciating steps, he can go no further. He closes his eyes, keeping the first and only tears in his life from spilling over.
…
“Here, let me help.”
C R I T O
brother of the tundra