“Paradise,” Charybdis echoed quietly, thinking of the territory she knew sprawled across the southern point of Atlantis. For all her restless roaming of the Ridge, she had never gone beyond its borders. No other place had a hold on her as the place that was her home did, except maybe the drowned ruins of Cimarron, but she’d not dared visit that graveyard. It was time, maybe, that she ventured beyond these borders, to learn of the lands that lay to the south of the mountains. There was so much she wanted to know about the place called Paradise, but when she parted her lips again, the question that slipped out was lonely and light. “Were you born dere?”
If he was, that would be ever so intriguing. And if he wasn’t? Charybdis was sure he’d still be of use when it came to navigating a safe path when she finally left the shadowed jungle of the Ridge.
She lapsed into a silence then, contemplative and content in the moment, comforted by the almost imperceptible sound of the stallion’s breathing. Charybdis’s hearing was acute, though not perhaps so much as one born completely blind. Some days, she considered it a curse, to hear the emptiness off the Ridge so loudly, but today, here and now it was a blessing. “I t’ink dey are all gone, Drogon,” the half-sighted mare murmured at length, the name of the stallion rolling off her tongue like water. “Except for two.” He asked for her name then, and she gave it freely. “Charybdis.” And moments later, she picked up where she had left off, her voice dropping to a whisper as if her words were secret, and not meant to be spoken aloud. “I hear de rivers whispering sometimes, always in de shadows where I cannot see dem.”
Silence fell again, and Charybdis banished it with a decisive shake of her head, gently dismissing the offer, but deeply appreciative of it nonetheless. “Dey need no-one but de oder ‘alf of dem. Dey will not come for me, let alone anyone else.” She would not repay Drogon’s kindness by leading him on a fruitless search. And it may well be that seeking out the twins with a stranger in tow would only drive them further from her, and if whispers from the shadows were all she was going to get, she’d rather not risk losing that entirely. It would have to be enough.
Because who was Charybdis to ask any more of the children she had left behind?
But she did not want Drogon to leave. So, even as she turned away, Charybdis turned to blindly look back at him, and beckoned him to follow. “Come, I wan' to show you somet’ing.” And without delaying any further, she slipped away into the jungle, picking up her pace when she thought she heard Drogon following, and soon she was crashing through the undergrowth in a spontaneous game of chase, mouth opening in silent laughter, feeling so much lighter than she had in a long time.
|