we ain't never getting older. [magnus]

[Salomea]

The sun rises over the kingdom I trespass in, the one the Beqannans call Loess. It glints off the wide, snowy expanse, much of it untouched yet (I will soon learn that few travel by foot, anymore). Tephra, he had said. West, they had pointed. Safe, my heart had thrummed. I pace the ridge I’d passed the night on in search of the easiest way down, squinting against the wintry glare.   I ache for them. It is a physical pain, like a vise gripped around my chest, pressing my ribs inward to overlap one another until every one of my breaths splits me open. When the earth had shook, when the cries of sickness, plague, and death had filled my ears, I had hoped that Set would come for me. Even Niklas, wicked as he is, would have been a welcome sight to my sleepless sight. I had followed their paths shortly after Magnus and Ilma had left me in the Field to contemplate my future, but had lost them amongst the rocky foothills of the mountains. No doubt both had briefly left the mortal plane, their magicks teleporting them elsewhere in Beqanna. Set had promised he would find me again in due time … Path located, I sink to my haunches, sliding down the rock face several yards, twisting to avoid several cacti jutting from the snow. On semi-level ground again, I shake my ink-stained coat out with a low groan. My throat burns with dehydration, my tongue a thick weight in my mouth. I had been so desperate to be rid of them, the shadow and the mage who had raised me. Now, in the face of uncertainty, I long for the only comfort I’d ever known.   Another day’s – or two, or three – journey and I am passing through a brilliantly colored forest. Though it is winter everywhere else I have been -- the white snow scattered with the old blood of, I can only assume, those afflicted by the sickness spreading – here the trees are still adorned in their autumnal glory. The trails are easy enough to follow, the boulders large enough to hide me from sight whenever I cross another.   I have lost track of time by the time the humid air of Tephra fills my nostrils. It reeks of Niklas. It is a pair of gold-flecked eyes that play in my mind’s eye though. Magnus. Remarkably, the stench of fire and brimstone fades, replaced by a distinctive musk, as if materialized by force from memory. I will refuse to address the small voice that mocks me, pointing out my weakness, my need for someone to lean on. Instead, I roll my shoulders, drawing myself up taller, blinking the exhaustion from my eyes.   He looks harried – I, of course, am clueless – and I have only a moment to admire his soot-licked frame before he notices me. When our eyes meet, I force an admonishing smile as I saunter toward him, doing my best to hide the exhaustion from the lines of my body. "You never said anything about a damn volcano," I greet, flicking my lava-singed tail, the lovely white now black and curled.

[magnus]

I wanna give you wild love, the kind that never slows down
I wanna take you high up let our hearts be the only sound

He hadn’t been able to shake the memory of her and that strange fever dream night in the Field. He can’t forget the cry that had split the sky in half, the strange dual-colored stallion and his warning before slipping into the night, or the girl nearly wild with emotions he couldn’t name. It had not been easy to leave here there, to back off and give her the space she so obviously needed to breathe, to gain her ground, and it has not been easy to not think of her. He has caught himself sometimes lifting his head and looking to the horizon, a faint frown furrowing his brow, deepening the gold in his contemplative eyes.

So, at first, he doesn’t trust his own vision when she cuts across the land.

Recent days have been tough, after all, and his sleep has been even more rare than usual.

Still, she warms his gaze and the corner of his scarred lips curve upward as he notices her cutting her own path through the land. At her admonishment, his crooked grin grows, something mischievous sparking in his gaze. “Oh, did I fail to mention the sulphur and the ash?” He glances upward, exaggerating a frown as he pretends to think on it more. “Must have slipped my mind.” There is almost the hint of something boyish and charming in his face as he finds her gaze once more but it slips away quickly.

“I’m glad you made it here, Salomea.” He watches her for a second, studying her features, looking for some sign of her well-being. Whether that means looking for hints of the disease ravaging the rest of the land or how she fares with internal family affairs, he isn’t sure. Still, he eventually drops his gaze, giving her the privacy of space and turning his head toward the rest of the land that curls around them.

“Would you like a tour of this ash-ridden place?”

I wanna go where the lights burn low and you're only mine

[Salomea]

I watch the curve of his smile as it lifts the corner of his mouth. I wonder how many others have been on the receiving end of that smile. I’m staring again. I refocus to meet his eyes and surely the grey of mine lightens by a few shades at the glint of mischievousness that I find there. Any irritation I may have felt when I’d crossed that lava stream disappears, stolen away by the boyish charm that colors the jest of his sarcastic answer. I roll my eyes in jest at his response, my nose wrinkling in a mixture of disgust and soft laughter. The sound seems strange. I shake my head a bit, clearing the odd feeling away, absently flicking the once bone-white end of my tail. When I look back, his expression is different, not nearly as playful. Serious, even, but yet something inside me trills with pleasure at his next words. He is glad I came? I am careful not to show my delight, schooling my features into something I imagine is unreadable. At least, I hope it is. I suddenly realize that I came here not knowing whether he was like them, the ancient relatives I have come to know as father and brother. He is the one staring now, with a different sort of regard, one I cannot quite suss out. I frown, tilting my head. Was he reading my thoughts just now? Quickly, I sort through the web of my most recent contemplations for anything he might use against me. His gaze drops away, though, and I realize I’ve been holding my breath. "I’m not infected," I blurt, ears turning back and then forward, defiance sharpening my gaze. “At least, I don’t think I am. Set would know, would’ve found me and healed me.” This last I say more to myself, mumbling as he looks away. And I wonder if it’s true. “I suppose if I am going to live here,” I shift, nudging his shoulder with my nose, “I should learn the lay of the land.” His rich musk mingles with the humid air and it clings to the soft part of my muzzle. It takes a decided measure of self-control to withdraw my touch from his golden hide. Power and strength I am familiar with, but there is something different about him. Were I better acquainted with the quality, I would recognize it as his innate goodness; and were I a kinder creature, I would leave his life immediately upon such a conclusion. In an attempt to disguise my sudden unnerving and thrumming heart, I move away and ahead of him. I glance back over my shoulder with an easy smile. “Tell me about yourself, Magnus.”

[magnus]

I wanna give you wild love, the kind that never slows down
I wanna take you high up let our hearts be the only sound

She is both of the new world and the old and he wonders how much of each she carries within her breast. He wonders how much of each he carries within him. The Jungle and the Gates and the Chamber all rattling around in his chest with Tephra, the weight of them like stones as they sit there. He is a patchwork stallion with all of his lives lived, all of the wars and raids and love, all that he has had and lost. He wonders if she can see the scars nestled amongst the more prominent of his markings, if she can see where he has been torn apart and then stitched together, where all of the greedy hands have dipped into his chest and taken and taken and taken—and then cursed when there was nothing in there left to give.

Such wanderings of the mind, however, stay hidden behind a crooked smile and the warmth of his gold-flecked eyes as he considers her. He drops her gaze as she tells him that she’s not infected, and he worries for a moment that he only cared for his own safety. “I am glad to hear it,” his whiskey voice is low and rumbles from his chest when he finally looks back up through the tangles of his onyx forelock. “I would hate to see you sick,” he admits, pressing the truth of it into her palm. He is not sure why he cares so much that she be safe, but he determines that she is too much of a wild thing to be tamed by something as regular as a disease, magic-born though it may be. “And it is good to know you would be cared for.”

His smile widens as she touches his shoulder and he returns the gesture, the velvet of his nose pressing into her flesh and breathing in the wild winds of her. “I suppose that you should,” he agrees, turning his handsome, heavy-jawed head to the land that unfolds around them. Were she to call him good, he might laugh. He might grow somber. To think of the blood on his hands. The wars he has played his part in starting. The death he has wrought. The way he sometimes hungered for it in ways he does his best to suppress—the anger that he can barely bite back at times. Still, he does not struggle with such darkness now and he instead moves to join her, shoulder brushing her own as they walk further inland.

“Such a simple question has an incredibly long answer,” his voice is light but there are undercurrents of something else beneath it as he looks at her out of the corner of his eye. “Are you sure that you are up for such a story? Would you like for me to start with this life or my first?” His lip quirks, hiding the pang in his heart he always feels about when he mentions his death, but it has been a while now, and it no longer holds the same power over him that it once had. “Perhaps we should start with you first instead.”

I wanna go where the lights burn low and you're only mine