Tale Time #19
An ache deep inside him greeted him upon waking. His body was tired, hungry, dehydrated, and worse still, the emotional exhaustion from the night before still clung to him, pressing into his skin. He had too many needs to address and he felt paralyzed, unsure where to start.
Claire was gone. He could sense it before he’d even sat up to look for her. When she was with him, her presence shifted the air, interrupted the stillness of a room. Her pack lay open on the stone floor opposite the cooled coals of the fire.
Jamie pulled a shirt from his pack and made his way down to the creek to cleanse his body of the night air, the sticky cooled sweat on his skin peppered with the seeds of distant flowers seeking new life. His body was weary and worn,his soul battered, his dreams crawling from his head onto his chest, staring him down. How had it been her in that helicopter, of all people?
He knelt before the icy water and bowed to it, grass tickling his chest. His fingers dug into the muddy bank and he leaned forward until his face dipped entirely into the current. Supplication. Cleansing. Forgiveness. Benediction. Was it for her that the Urisk watched over him, kept him alive despite his recklessness? So that he might someday find her? That the secrets she held would survive with her to bring down the gods? Was this his chance at redemption for his cowardice, for his failure to protect his family?
Jamie lifted his head from the water and gasped for air. His eyes opened to the rivulets of water dripping from his hair, and through it he saw in the colors of the current the deep brown of Claire’s hair gliding over the surface of the rocks midstream, smooth and shimmering in the morning light. The sun peeked through the clouds and glowed golden on his skin, the color of her whisky eyes. She was this earth now, as sure as he was. His voice spoke as breath into the wind, a whispered exhale. “I willna let harm come to ye.”
Scalamandre, at Chapter 7, @futurelounging
