| Pay Heed the Squall {a half-blind augur bound to the Ridge} |
Charybdis had lost her way.
Skylla had come back to her, at the very end. Fate and the tides had washed them to the ragged fringes of the Lagoon, where they had laboured together and given life to sons who would be as twins for all of their lives. Charybdis had arisen, but Skylla had not the strength to stand. “This one remembers,” the silver-maned mare had wept, but Charybdis silenced her sobbing with a brush of her lips. It went unsaid between them, but the both of them knew the once-savage mare didn’t have long. For the atrocity she’d once tried to commit; wanting to snuff out the life of her newborn daughter because of the rage she felt towards the innocent child’s sire, this was what it would cost her. A life, for a life. But, she’d been blessed with a son, and though she’d be denied the chance to watch him grow up, he was hale and hearty, and Charybdis would protect him for as long as she could. Skylla might be dying, but her son was so alive. “This one remembers you,” Skylla had whispered weakly as the sun had dipped toward the horizon. Charybdis was laying in the sand behind her, her body a protective wall of warmth, and the two colts were tucked in close beside. “This one remembers the place we came from, and the dreams that led us here.” The waters had been so angry that day, and a great storm had blown in. It had torn Charybdis from Skylla’s side, and for the longest time, she’d thought Skylla drowned in the sea. This time, at least, Charybdis had her chance to say goodbye. How long she lay beside the mare who had once been as half of her soul, she could not say. The newborn colts were strangely still and quiet, as if they could sense the solemnity that hung in the very air they breathed. Charybdis was waiting for a sign. And it came. Just as the sun was swallowed completely by the horizon, and the first wave of the incoming tide whispered around Skylla’s outstretch hooves, the half-blind mare saw it through the blurred veil of her tears, a flicker of green dancing on the waters far out to sea, and she choked on grief and joy entwined at such a blessed sight. In the days and weeks that followed, she hid herself away from the men of the Lagoon, ever alert for any danger that posed a threat to the boys at her heel. It was when exhaustion gnawed at her bones that a stallion finally approached, and despite the protests of her mortal shell, the bloody-shouldered mare had been ready to throw herself at him and drive him away. But something stopped her teeth from seeking to find a hold on the vulnerable flesh of the brute’s throat. "'im blood is de same dat flows t'rough you," the pale mare discerned, and turned to gently usher the sooty red colt forward. A similar blanket of ivory draped both the stallion and the colt’s back. And a moment later, the lean black colt sidled up alongside his brother, of his own accord. "Dey belong to each other, and to de waters of de Lagoon you t’ink of as yours." She scrutinised the tall, heavily built stallion with a narrowed eye. "I protect dem now, but when I am gone from dis place, you must protect, until dey learn to protect each other." And she kept to her word. Woke one day to find the boys gone, no doubt following the deep call of the Lagoon’s waters, which it was not given to Charybdis to hear. It had not been her intention to ever come back here (lest one she owed a great deal to had need of her). In her lonesome rumination, Charybdis surmised that maybe that was why the ocean had pulled her back. She thought she was finished with the Ridge. But the towering walls of stone that rose like giants from the sea - they cast long shadows, and their unspoken message was clear. The Ridge was not done with Charybdis. How long had it been since she’d left, content that the stallion who burned like fire was taking care of those who remained? How long had it been since he’d left too? Or perhaps, he hadn’t left at all, and was watching her from the shelter of safety of the thick rainforest that grew wild. But for all her searching, she’d seen no sign of him. And as for her twin river spirits, Charybdis ad called and called for them until her throat was raw and her voice was spent. They did not answer, nor deign to show themselves. Charybdis couldn’t be certain if they remained, but something of their spirits did, and that afforded her a little comfort. She spent the days traversing the high places, gazing down over the quiet jungle, seeking signs of life. And the evenings, she spent by the river where Tigris and Euphrates had been born. At night, she always drifted back to the shoreline, searching the skies for the moon, and speaking to a spirit that wasn’t there; a memory of one she would carry with her for the remainder of this life, in the hope that they would never be parted in the next. The sky was cloudless, and though the heavens were littered with stars, the moon had hidden itself away, and the ocean was ominously shadowed and still. "It’s so dark, Eidolon," Charybdis murmured sleepily, with eyes closed. Still, she was denied the rest she so craved. Minutes later, or maybe hours, the ghostly white mare sighed and opened her strange, mismatched eyes. "I cannot see, I cannot see." She was lost, doubted her purpose, didn’t know where to go, or what she was supposed to do. But the Ridge had called to her, and the ocean had delivered her, and she would haunt the seafront, the twisting jungle paths and the windswept clifftops until she made sense of the turbulence that swelled within her, restless as the ceaseless tides.
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