Taalamihi took a deep breath.
The smell of the sea filled her lungs as she turned her head east, looking deep into the horizon. She'd been on the ship for almost a moon.
"But finally," the First Mate had assured her, "today? We'll see land, lassie. I can feel it."
Today, she would finish something very important.
A trip across the salt she had waited on for thirty years.
Suruputwi had listened to stories told to them of Ketenramm's people. About the world across the salt. He had dreamed of such a world, a place where he and Taalamihi could go to explore the rest of the world and sate their wanderlust. When Taalamihi had bore him a child, Suruputwi was even more emboldened to make such a trip. He had no idea, of course, of what the dangers of being at sea actually might be.
With little Taawa approaching his second sun, he'd managed to convince Taalamihi to take the plunge with him. They had secured passage for themselves: a merchant ship, the Aergwilf, was due to leave within a sennight, bound to a place called Limsa Lominsa, and was in need of extra hands. Suruputwi figured after they made it over, he could pursue work as a crafter and tend for little Taawa while Taalamihi learned about the dangerous game of the region.
As luck would have it, Taalamihi would fall ill two suns before the ship was set to sail. Their carefully-laid plans had been thrown into disarray, and the window of opportunity to be able to cross the salt threatened to slip out of reach.
Taalamihi doesn't remember why she decided to tell Suruputwi to go on ahead without her. She said she'd figure out a way to get on the next ship. She said she'd join them after. That they would learn about the New World and carve something out for themselves there.
She was tough. She'd get better.
And so they set sail, Taawa a little bundle of joy in Suruputwi's arm as he pumped his fist in the air and promised they'd see each other again soon.
She remembers watching the Aergwilf slowly get lost in the horizon, running away from the sun and fading from view into the vast ocean of salt.
Three moons had passed, and no ships had sailed out of the Tuliyollal port headed across the salt. The few that did refused to take Taalamihi, citing any number of excuses.
Just a few days later, a ship came bearing news.
The Aergwilf had sank malms off the coast of Limsa Lominsa and only a few survivors had been recovered, and many were still unaccounted for.
She nearly died from grief on the spot.
The next sennights were a haze. Regret over the decision she'd made to stay behind. To send little Taawa along with Suruputwi, as if she had condemned the two to their deaths. She wondered if her presence would have made a difference; if they would have made it simply by virtue of having her there.
Finally, when the opportunity came to sail across the salt…
Fear and despair had taken deep root, to a level Taalamihi found impossible to resist. The thought of traveling and confirming the terrible truth—that maybe Suruputwi had died, and her little Taawa along with him… it was too much to bear.
But her body demanded she do something. Anything.
She did the only thing she knew: she returned to the Hunt.
She didn't return to her tribe. She couldn't. What would she say to them, when she eventually faced them? What could she tell them about the terrible tragedy that befell her family?
The thoughts simmered in her mind over the years.
She could never forget the two. But more than that, she could never forget the day she heard the news.
Many were still unaccounted for. Words that rang in her head, over and over again. She had no hope that she might ever see Suruputwi again. He would've sent notice or letter or something if he had made it, she reasoned. She could only honor him in her thoughts and pray for his passing.
But what of her little Taawa? What had become of him? Did he grow up to be big and strong like his mother? Did he grow up to be compassionate and kind like his father?
Now, thirty years after the tragedy that had robbed her of progress, staring out into the horizon as the sun began to rise from the East, she felt something in her chest. A knot, almost like a messy mixed yarn ball of emotions, the threads of which she could not possibly begin to disentangle without making an entire mess of herself.
Taalamihi knew it was hoping against hope. But that hope, painstakingly put back together over years and years of silent suffering, was all that she had left.
She wanted to know the answer to her question. Did he get to grow up?
Her arms folded under her chest and an uneasy smile cracked her lips.
"If you're somewhere out there… then I'm coming. Let's see what my little Taawa grew up to be."
