Falls

What if he could still see it, etched into the blind side of his mind like the great ice wall before them? The memory lingers- the wolves, the disgust, the death. There had been tears and screams, echoing off the ocean cliffs as a pale body fell into the sea foam. Yet he had whispered a short word of thanks under his breath.

Were it not for what he had seen with his own eyes- still two when he had been but a boy- he would still be wandering the halls of these isles, avoiding mention of a man’s name that brought bristles to his back.

Untethered, his search had concluded now, in the shadows with the ominous creature, their eyes locking and their voices low, so as not to disturb the ghosts. Poor Arris, so bright and lovely, disappearing into the sea foam on her own four legs, swimming into the sunset likely never to return. In her, she took his light. Their relationship, intimate and daringly incestuous, had been all that he could hold on to. All he ever wanted.

She was as unattainable as the corpse of their father.

What does he want now, but to go back to the innocent days of childhood, when father and mother could not sway him, but brother and sister could have bonds that were impossibly stronger than blood. Anawar bleeds for his sister- the hot red streak that runs down his face is but a reminder.

“Home.”

Flat and low, like he was speaking of treasure. “My home.” He itches for the old days, to clear out the squatters and cleanse the earth of their sins- just as he had purged himself of his when the wolves descended upon him and his sister. That was when the fire had awoken. A trade for his sight. “I am Anawar. Of the Cove.”

His birthright.