Seaside Moors echèk

"de sea ends t'ere, @Maleah. @Thibault." a wind howled across the open land, twisting their fur.
unbeknownst to mireille, these moors had once been the home of rusalka, siblings born on this very land in the progenitor of sapphique.
rosalyn and erzulie had once walked these seagrass hills.
if there was any chance miette had somehow washed a week down the coastline, they had exhausted it; miette; astera; mireille felt herself start to tear, and faced sharply toward the ocean which had given them no help.

the coastline is much longer and much larger than maleah had previously thought. it is vast, violent, unending; it shifts from sharp cliffs to bristling forests and to plateauing emerald-grass beaches.
the cold is biting. for the past few miles, maleah had kept her chin pressed to her chest in an effort to seek her own body heat; and every once in a while she had to pause and alternate which foot was lifted off the freezing ground.
she stood with little thibault between her and mireille; she pulled him to her side with a yank of her foreleg in order to shield him from the cutting wind. do you think either of them could've made it further inland? the children were not as young as they once had been; they could, within reason, go anywhere. i mean, they know how to swim, right? they could-- hm. she should stop talking.

"dey know." her voice was soft, wounded. they knew but they were only children, only little ones at that. she looked toward maleah with a sigh welling in her throat, then turned them inland.
the moors were more deceptive than they seemed. 
each rolling wave of grass concealed dipping terrain and small ridges that led down below sea level, then up once more, until when mireille glanced back, the ocean was far behind them.
she called out for the girls, trying to hide the sting in her eyes as the lash of the wind and not her own anguish.

maleah began to join her voice with that of mireille's. she did not know why she still hoped to hear an answer.
she missed miette. she missed the pitchy laughter and the way she still walked like a toddler. she missed the excitement that brewed behind her eyes when maleah spoke of her craft. miette had become something of a friend.
though she knew her own grief paled in comparison to what mireille felt. so much, she had been through so much in such a short time —
we're gonna find them, mir, the healer spoke, though her voice was as cutting as a whisper. they're smart girls. you raised them. i'm sure they're-- somewhere, laughing together over making us worry. it had to be so. it had to be.

maleah reassured, but mireille was far too preoccupied with her status as failed mother to heed, to internalize. "i hope very much dat you be right, or dat dey didnae come so very far."
the sea took. the sea gave. the sea took, and this time it might be miette and astera who had been the penalty.
the price.
her eyes blurred; she was a ribbon of red as she moved deeper into the moors, calling, calling — even if mireille had stopped believing she would hear an answer.

the sea roared on behind them until it became nothing but sharp static. the moors are empty and cold. mireille only grew more frantic, and for someone so typically sure of herself, at once the beryl felt a shattering helplessness.
come here, she felt herself speak, even if she did not hear it. sit for a minute. you should take a break. you're gonna wear yourself thin.
with them she had taken only the most necessary of first aid herbs, in case they came across the worst; and in this moment she wished desperately she had more. something, anything to ease mireille's despair in ways that maleah herself could not.

maleah was right; mireille heaved a long sigh and finally settled alongside the other as the wind howled across the moors. she was too tired to cry and too exhausted to be angry; she simply could not fathom how this had happened, and fought the want to bend beneath the weight of her anguish.
slow breaths eventually returned mireille to herself; windswept and windchapped, she finally stood to her feet once more and glanced in sorrow at the sea.

while mireille sat, maleah drifted further into the moors in search of some sort of calming agent. she sifts through mud and snow and somewhere finds the roots of a gentle herb.
eat this, she says with a nudge, the gold of her eyes turning to glass with fondness and shared pain. it'll keep you calm, and your head clear.
it was all she knew to do. if she could, she would have swam to the edge of the sea itself.
maybe they didn't make it out this far.

"i was never an herbwitch," the obsidian teased maleah even as she glanced with a minute suspicion over the proffered plant. "maybe not. but t'ere be two of dem, an' you know how children can be when dey believe dey be on an adventure."
another smile before her mouth trembled; she ate the herbal offering and sighed.

maleah breathes a sigh of relief as the seawoman relents. she watches her chew the herb with a satisfied curl to her lips.
i know, she nods. but they're smart girls. i think they get it from you.
she digs her toes into the wet gravel with a quiet exhale. she had never been one for touch, and yet she inexplicably found her head resting upon the red-pelted shoulder, much in the same way it had that afternoon beneath the trees.

it was easy then, to bring her arm around maleah, to lean into the sweet softness of her body; the women rested as one and listened to the cold wind scouring the moors in a mournful howl; mireille turned her ears into it, listening, listening hard for miette's questioning pipe or astera's kind chatter.
nothing, nothing save for she and maleah and the infernal keen of a khamsin that knew only salt.