Countless times he'd returned to this place, in this life and the last; a different time, a different face, but he was unchanged. Panacea cut slowly through the fog, his lungs aching in the cold of the morning. His eyes were turned to the sea. Beyond the hazy shoreline, he knew the Blackwater Islands were still there somewhere, but it didn't feel real. It still felt like a dream he'd once had.
He hesitated. On the islands, no one would ever find him. But was that really what he wanted? Freedom at the cost of his sanity; he was certain he'd lose it, all alone like that, forever.
I could join a pack, he thought, gripped by tension at the very idea. Shelter, protection, companionship; he wanted it but he didn't, already imagining others coming to harm because of him. He stepped into the water uncertainly, aware that it was the wrong time to cross and willing to swim if he had to. But he couldn't decide.
summer came, and went. autumn’s chilling breath raked through the sound, fog roving in packs along the strand.
august’s climbing sun would banish fall’s cold for now, but in weeks the tide would turn. leaves would turn to ember, and eventually fall along a forest floor carpeted in somber reds.
val descended the cliffs. a speck along the shoreline drew his eye, but occasionally it was clouded by fog. as his toes touched cold sand he began to trot, focused on the figure that drew gradually closer.
The islands. They represented a strange and terrible time in his life, that messy blurry foundational thing we call childhood. His own had been lonely, and sometimes he thought that he would never truly get past it, that lonely was all he would ever be. Even among others he felt alone; alone and deprived of what the world had owed him and never paid.
It was a dark stranger who interrupted Panacea's contemplations. He didn't leave the water, but shot a glance over his shoulder to study the man. Hey,
His voice sounded hollow to his own ears. He looked back toward the islands. There are islands out there. Blackwater. I was raised by the druids... but then they disappeared.
Sometimes it doesn't seem real,
He continued with a little sigh, thinking aloud. Panacea didn't think to introduce himself; if he was honest, he wasn't interested in friendship. It didn't even matter if the stranger responded, or stayed to listen at all. It just felt good to say it out loud, to someone else. It made it feel a little more real.
to val, the man's body language spoke of something forlorn. it sang in the way his sea-fire gaze traveled over the waves, as if his soul had crossed that unfathomable blue long ago.
the stranger spoke of an island. val's bones seemed to stiffen. what was it then? homesickness? sadness? he knew of no druids remaining. had they ever been a threat to his kind?
the past never seems real.
in that moment val felt the most inexplicable thing: a rush of something as close to empathy as he could ever assign to a stranger. he brought forth his right limb, where the jagged scar from the bear that tore into sapphique still clawed its way into him. but the scars it leaves remind us it is real.
One day he would look back on this moment, and he would remember the smell of the ocean; the icy touch of fog cutting through his fur; green eyes like a storm brewing far out at sea. In the moment Panacea was aware of nothing but that his heart was suddenly and desperately in his throat. He'd heard that love at first sight was for fools. What about love at first words?
His eyes traced the dark features and then drifted down, studying the scar. If our scars are our past,
He said softly, looking back up. Then I guess the future is healing.
Or maybe it's figuring out what comes after healing,
Panacea stepped from the water, his decision made. But he couldn't help one last glance toward the islands. So far it seems like a whole lot of nothing.
the future is healing.
a softness lingered in the brief flare of val’s soft smile.
he thought of not his own future, but that of his children. of the next generation of rusalkan-sapphiques.
he thought of this man’s future too. would an island feature in it? or would he bury that figurehead behind, like the past which grew ever lengthening behind him?
it’s not nothing.
val kept from the waves, his secret heart fluttering to see panacea so fearlessly depart them. you find your anchor eventually. i’d like to think that, anyway. who are you, exactly?
Your anchor. He liked that, though Panacea couldn't quite imagine anything ever tying him down. He'd never known that kind of peace, in this life or the last.
The green-eyed stranger wanted his name, and he hesitated at that. A false name lingered on the tip of his tongue, but after a moment, he found himself saying, No one, really. My name is Panacea,
— and he realized that he couldn't recall the last time he'd told someone his true name, the one he'd been given at birth. You?
panacea. a name of promise. val wondered then if this man with the affinity for the sea shared any blood with sapphique.
or perhaps like him, there was too much salt for the blood.
i’m val.
too simple a name to be meaningful. valravn elwood dahomey-rivani-eyjolfur. but val is easier on everyone.
a twinkle sparkled to life in his gaze, which now rested squarely on panacea’s painted features. will you be staying here?
the pair spoke for some time, but val had other duties to attend and eventually made his leave, picking the trail that wound its way out of the sound towards home.