Finding Contentus

Chapter 28: Two (2)

He felt cold. Very cold. More cold than he had ever felt in his entire life. And so did she. That's how she always felt around him. That's how she always was around him.

And yet...

Never in his life. Did he ever think that such a cold could feel so pleasant that the shivering chills just...

Chilled.

Genesia's brown eyes remained glued on the blue eyes that never left his. Or specifically, blue eye, the other was struggling to remain open from the long cuts above it.

Where his eyes were aching, red and swollen, hers... he couldn't quite tell. He blinked in intervals and rubbed away at them to ensure that they weren't playing tricks on him. That they weren't lost, but rather found.

The blurriness in his eyesight made its reappearance every time he blinked to prevent things from being crystal clear to clear away all his doubts that had been beating him down to no end.

Ever so slowly, Genesia dug deep and found the strength to do something he felt like he had forgotten how to do in his plummeting descent of death.

Rise.

Gingerly, he got up, still staring, half expecting what he was seeing in front of him to disappear, half expecting what was in front of him to remain as still as possible so that everything could fully come into focus.

He made out two distinct claw marks, starting just above her eyebrows, parallel lines running down the middle of her eyes. They looked new, fresh, red, but dry, presumably from the cold waters.

He recognized the signature of those twin scars. One line came directly from Neosa. And the other line came from me.

And that's when the voices started coming in again. That's when the last image he had of her came back when they were falling from the sky. That's when he remembered the blood on his fingers and mouth that tasted sweet cream, before it got corrupted by the horrid blood of the primals, and sweetened again bitterly by the unfortunate victims of the sea.

Real. Really? Reality.

"What you are feeling is all—"

But this time, before his thoughts could begin flooding his mind, Genesia felt a solid kick to his face that sent him flying backwards, skidding harshly off the sandy shore.

In one moment, two things happened in an odd instance of sense being knocked into Genesia. For one, his world was sent spinning from the sensation of pain, when he groaned and felt for his nose that was leaking with blood. Two, his thoughts simplified everything to make the world stop spinning into one thing.

What he was feeling, and specifically—

How real all his senses were registering things. His sense of taste of his own blood, his sense of touch at his own damaged nose, his sense of smell at the person that kicked him in the first place. And most importantly.

His sense of sight, that saw the one and only Kakara standing before him, still shivering and coughing violently as though her lungs were both frozen and on fire.

Then finally. "T-t-that, r-real enough f-f-for you?"

Relief. Relief from disbelief poured over him.

"K-K-K—" Genesia tried saying her name, just her name, only to clam up and reach for his throat.

He felt his throat tightening at the weight of how such a simple thing proved to be so difficult. As though the mere mention of her name would both escape his lips and be lost forever, or never escape his lips and not reach her in the first place.