After Forever Falls Apart

Chapter 26 (a tapestry)

Cut in half, the sun is delving into the ocean when I wake. Red light, dark blue water, my eyes think the scene should mix black, or muddy, not dazzle as light on water.

Fumbling around me, I dig out the bandages and a water bottle from the backpack, pull off the cap but there's no water, I dig out another bottle and gulp liquid until bitterness dilutes off my tongue. My fingers slide the clay container back, but it clinks, making a jet bird by my boots twitch. My hand freezes. She goes still. I extract my arm from the pack, slowly roll out my aching neck.

I tug the cloak off, and the shirt, to re-apply bandages. An ocean wind tickles my hot skin. I tear off the old bandages, wince, bundle them up in my fist. I may not need new bandages. If I were to lie here for another day. Yet, we have to walk to a town, and find a crystalline-blooding child, hoping the stone mage sleeps this night, and the scabs could easily reopen.

The skritching of the bandage roll, half used, wakes the jet bird for real. She hops to her feet, tilts her head at me. Flaps her wings and I stare back, patting bandages into place. She flutters to the waves, takes a tiny hop, and plunges underwater. I shake my head and stick bandages to my back. Facedown, she paddles her wings, mostly just splashing. Bobbing back upright, she kicks with narrow talons and ever so slowly creeps towards shore.

I re-pack the bandage roll. Carefully tug on my shirt, don the cloak even though I prickle with uncomfortable heat. "Let's go," I stand, shake sand off the backpack and hug it in my arms. "Night doesn't last forever."

She paddles slightly closer to the shore. I plod away from the waves. Dusk light strikes the ash blanket a silvery-gray, the catapult a looming skinny structure across the distance. I walk, halfway on the shifting beach, halfway on the shifting ash, undecided on which is better.

Behind me, a jet bird caws and erupts from the shoreline, kicking a spray of sand and water in her wake.

***

When people approached the next dawn, dear dead, you hid. Hid as well as you could, you covered yourself in snow where the cave ceiling had collapsed. You tucked the sea cat's bones in the crook of your arm, shushed the jet bird squawking at the narrow air hole you left in the side.

None of the blood textures you recognized. You didn't bother distinguishing them beyond the numbers, five, you didn't want to know more than that, knowing none of them were Tatter-cloak.

They came quietly, didn't speak, walked as if it were the most boring thing in the world. As if snowbanks were less remarkable than the color of breath.

The remains of the house stood between you and the soldiers coming from the frost orchards. But you bit your lip, because last night beside the house you'd left a clear path through the snow, straight to your hiding place.

The jet bird squawked at the air hole, and you whispered, "are we thinking the same thing?" as if she had remembered the snow path at the same time as you, had considered the closing distance between the soldiers and the remains of the house.

Regardless, you punched the air hole wider and poked her free by the tail feathers. "Don't let them find us," you whispered, squinting over the dazzling snow. You guided her blood toward the plowed ice canyon winding all the way from where your window had been, so she could sweep over your tracks, or carve out dozens of new ones, confusing ones.

She, instead, shot into the air. You covered your eyes with your hands and held back a moan. Snowflakes settled on your knees through the hole, cold. You brushed them away, they melted into droplets in the tiny cavern warming with your body.

Of course, you hardly cared for the snowflakes dusting your knees. They just minded you while the jet bird rose into the air, and the five soldiers jumped at a growing speck of storm blood, stopping and gaping and trying to scatter. The jet bird cometed through the middle of five soldiers, tossing bodies perfectly outward. Snowflake droplets on the packed floor bounced.