‹ Prequel: Ninety Days of Water
Status: Active.
Tundra
Chapter XV – Still – Part III
The air was calm and cold and ancient, edged with the bitterness of aeons. For millennia, the sea had bashed itself against this cliff, turning to salt and savage spray, but today, nothing stirred. Nothing stirred in the wind, which was subtle and chilling as quiet frost, and nothing stirred in the heart of the man who confronted it. In the emptiness there was no breeze to stroke the many braids that grew like worms on his head, nothing to make him flinch and send the long scar, long as an oar stroke, twitching along his back.
It was a dry, silent kind of day. Eiron faced the water, and felt nothing. He should have rejoiced to see the sea that led to the shores of his village, but the days –or was it weeks?– on land had sobered him. Now the sound of the waves lapping contentedly on the beach below was foreign to him. It replaced what had become the familiar whistling of birds and scampering of beasts on the howling tundra, but all of that would have to be set aside.
Eiron faced that old, cold air, and knew one thing for certain. He was going home.
It was a dry, silent kind of day. Eiron faced the water, and felt nothing. He should have rejoiced to see the sea that led to the shores of his village, but the days –or was it weeks?– on land had sobered him. Now the sound of the waves lapping contentedly on the beach below was foreign to him. It replaced what had become the familiar whistling of birds and scampering of beasts on the howling tundra, but all of that would have to be set aside.
Eiron faced that old, cold air, and knew one thing for certain. He was going home.