From Far Away and Beloved

This, like all long stories, begins in the middle.

She is drowning. The arms-swinging-feet-kicking-mind-numbing type of drowning that the mind convinces itself it can get out of. She is gasping for air where there is no air to breathe. She is desperate, the black dots already edging into her vision. As if on cue, before she passes out, her fingers hit air, followed by her head, her nose and mouth gaping for the clear, crisp oxygen, while water sputters out of her mouth. She can tread, but barely. She is weak. She won't admit it.

"AETHON!" Her words rip across the calm sea, but the brown haired boy is nowhere to be found.
"AETHON!" A ripple. Two ripples. Nothing.

She paddles in the direction of the slight movement, stopping when her legs hit a solid object. She yanks the boy up by his jacket, dragging him to the surface. He is not breathing. Not entirely uncommon for a vampire, but Aethon at least pretends. She shakes him several times, and he spits water at her.

"Don't do that," she scolds, feeling very much like a mother.

It takes them nearly an hour to paddle to land, taking time to rest when the water is shallow enough to stand on. They both collapse, panting, on the warm sand of the beach. He closes his eyes, facing the bright sun, while she sits up to take in their surroundings. They are lost, and a very long way from home. She doesn't even know how many jumps away they are anymore. Three, maybe four.

"Come on," she pants. "We should leave."

"I've just got to catch my breath."

"Aethon." He opens one eye to look at her skeptically. "The beach is empty."

She is right; The sand is well worn from the beating of the waves, but entirely empty. Not even a bird resides on the sand. They are the only two living things in sight.

"There weren't any fish in that ocean," he muses.

"No birds either."

She starts to stand up, shakily.

"What if we're too late?"

She brushes the sand off of her short, white tunic, but says nothing. She swallows hard, afraid of the same thing. But they had to be sure.

"Get up. We have to leave."

"To go where?"

"Anywhere. We'll at least need shelter."

He coughs, and stands up, not even bothering to brush the light sand off of his dark gray shirt or black pants. The two of them are an odd pair. He is much taller than her, but carries the height in his shoulders, as though resenting it. His dark brown hair is still wet, with little flecks of sand from washing ashore. By contrast, she stands with her head held high, dressed in a knee-length, short sleeved dress. Her black, shoulder length hair is covered in sand, practically dyed white. Neither of them have shoes. She is aware that if anyone did populate the land, they would stick out immediately.

They walk for two miles before they encounter their first person. A short, stocky woman emerges from a small, white hut just before the pair begins to bicker. The woman lets out a small cry, dropping the clay pot she was holding, and clutches her dress, which is strikingly similar to the one she wears.

The woman gives them food, but nothing else. She doesn't even ask their names.

"What are we going to do now?" he asks, trudging heavily up the hill just past the woman's house.

"Keep walking until we find something."

He stops walking, frustrated in an inexpressible way. His legs feel as though he has been walking for years, and wants nothing more than a warm bath and a meal. A real meal, not the paltry human sustenance. Something for him. She wouldn't let him eat the woman.

"We don't even know where we are," he finally whines.

"It's an island."

"How do you know that?"

She sighs heavily. She, too, is exhausted, and close to giving up. "I can just feel it."

"Khronus!" he calls as she begins to continue the walk. "Where are we?"

"The woman was wearing clothes like mine. Clay pots. Road system. Greece, most likely. Or Rome."

"What year is it?"

"Do we exactly look like we're in a position to be asking questions?" she hissed at him, stalking back down the hill. "We stick out like two fucking tourists in an ancient city. Now is not the time to ask for the details."

Angry, he pushes her. Kay slaps him across the face one with a bolt of power, a stinging bit of sand that it takes only a thought to produce.

"Do not touch me, leech."

Aethon seethes, and she can feel the anger radiating off of him in a tangible form, drying his still wet hair. But she has anger, too, decades of it infused in a lightning bolt that would take no energy to conjure. It could kill him, but she wasn't in the mood to care.

"Korakas," Aethon mutters, backing down. Kay flips him off, and the two keep walking.

The sun sets a few hours later, but the pair is no closer to finding food or shelter, and Aethon poutfully throws himself to the ground.

"I'm not going any further."

"I am not yr mother, leech. I will leave you here."

"Where is here, Khronus? What is this island?"

Kay sighs. She doesn't know, but refuses to admit it. Her pause is all the response he needs.

"We're five jumps away from home -"

"Three."

"Do you think it matters? This is a suicide mission. You're never going to find him. They're as good as dead out here."

Kay hits him with another bolt of power, this time a small static of the electricity building up behind her fingers. Again, it is little more than a thought, but she winces at the sharpness in the air.

"I will find him."

"No you won't -"

"That is my family!" The air crackles, but the two hardly notice it. "If suicide is the end, then so be it. But I will not sit idly by until I find him, until I find all of them." Kay devolves the static electricity in the air, converting it to sand in mere seconds. "It's my mess, and I'm going to clean it up."

Aethon turns to look away from her piercing gaze.

"I can't go any further," he says. "I haven't eaten in days."

Kay looks around them at the looming horizon. She can see nothing but hills and grass and limestone cliffs, with no hint of the humanity that she can feel like a soft hum on her fingertips.

"Stay here," she says. "I'll go on and come back for you."

"I don't trust you."

"I don't trust you either. But I have to get higher. There's something here, I can feel it. It's further inland, I think."

Aethon slumps back onto the ground. "This goes against all logic and building techniques. Why isn't everyone centered around the fucking water?"

"Because there was nothing there."

Aethon sighs.

"Fine. But if you don't come back for me, I'm not going to look for you. And I will eat that old woman."

Kay rolls her eyes and scoffs, walking away.

It takes her almost two additional hours to find something, and what she does find isn't much more than a collection of houses and a small farm. She slides down the hills, taking care to not frighten the animals, and spies on the first house she comes across.

The people are speaking in Greek. The man has a thin, wan face, and keeps sighing, while an androgynous person moves behind him, whispering soothing words in his ear. Kay cannot catch much, but can understand that they are concerned with money problems. It's an impoverished area, and she can see that much even in the dark. The two people are wearing tunics similar to Aethon's, but use a regional dialect different from his.

She frowns. Still no way to tell the year. The farm could be from any century, and the two people are using candles, which indicates nothing. Either way, she steels a sheep, touching it behind the ear in a soothing manner while she devolves it into sand and carries it in a jar she creates out of dirt. The island is old, almost older than she is.

When she finally makes it back to Aethon, the boy is passed out, slumped against a pile of grass. She reconstructs the sheep and devolves the jar, then jostles him awake. He is weak and pale and disoriented, but she turns away as he feeds. That whole system never much excited her. How something so pure and simple could be so messy, she did not understand, and had no desire to watch.

The two sleep separately under the stars, which twinkle mischievously. There is something that Kay was missing, some key piece of information that she had failed to gain from spying on the house. But she couldn't remember all of the words, and couldn't have Aethon translate. She figures that if it was important, it would come up later, and surrenders herself to sleep.