Sequoia Coast i am not the only traveler, who has not repaid his debt

“Raseri, wake up.”

The singing melody of her voice washed through the hairs of his ears. Dark eyelashes fluttered and closed against the vivid glow of the sun. The calidity of the Sunstone had exhausted his strength. He was young again, but his body had been worn by their battles and the weakness that they shared. The brute had been hired to teach them to fight, but he had not understood the undertaking. Still, he had been with them for nearly a year. In spite of his common sense, he had grown close to the Sunstone wolves. It would be time for him to leave, and he had prolonged the departure for far too long.

“Please, Raseri; I want to train some more,” she pleaded, closer to him – close enough that he could almost feel the touch of her pelt against his own coarse fur. Once more, his eyelids fluttered, and he peered into the bottomless pools of her gaze. The sea glass color was mesmerizing in comparison to the smolder of his own fiery optics. Kierkegaard had never seen something that was so vivid.

Moth smiled at him and then planted a swift kiss on his cheek. The ghost groaned and lifted his skull from the cave floor with a few swift blinks to rid himself of the sleep that clung to him like a wet, thick blanket. Her white-cloaked skull canted and she beamed with pearly white fangs. She was beautiful and so full of life. He never imagined he would ever find another like her. The heat emanated from her pelt, warming him. In spite of this, the ghost still felt a cold grip on his frame. It was almost as though a frigid wave had engulfed his body. The ache in his bones was foreign to the memory, but he felt it as he rose upward and huffed at the youthful desert wolfess. Moth's delight did not fade from her features. Her lithe frame danced toward him and he felt her – he swore that he could feel her – against his chest as she laughed.

A crash of waves jolted him. Kierkegaard did not remember the sound of water near the Sunstone wolf pack. It was queer and unusual that such a noise would encroach on his most fond memories. It was almost perverse that the world would take even this – a memory – from him.

The swelter tore against his frame as he stepped from the cave. The wraith's limbs quivered with each move. Almost as though he was not intended to be there, the pain beat against his body and demanded that he turn around. The brute had never followed her from the cave on that day; he had tiredly cast her from his presence and fallen back into a deep slumber. It was no longer a memory, but a fabrication of what he had longed for; the regret he had carried with him all his life.

Sea green bore into him and his lips twitched upward into something of a smile, but it vanished as he took another step and the scene flickered before him. “You're going to stay, then?” she asked him in a hopeful tone. The ghost nodded his head, but he did not feel his crown move. Regardless, Moth reacted pleasantly and her tail flagged as she guided them into the arid wastes. “Your father won't be pleased,” he remarked. His voice did not feel as though it belonged to him. It was foreign, almost as though someone else had spoken them. “He likes you, even if he doesn't act like it. He's just...” she trailed off, ears flattening to her skull. Kierkegaard waited for her to continue, but she didn't, and so he parted his lips to buoy something more. The sound of the ocean crashed against his skull with a piercing and frigid hand. The wraith turned his skull to look, as if he would find something beyond the waste, but there was nothing but ripe cacti and burnt umber. “Just?” the word echoed as it left his lips, and when he turned to see the gold of her frame, it faded before she fell back into focus. “He's just worried that you're going to abandon us. He likes you, but he – he says you don't belong here.” She turned to face him with a knowing expression. Kierkegaard had seen that look more times than he dared to admit.

“He's not wrong, you know.”

But he was not certain that he had even uttered the words this time. Moth seemed to understand, and her expression fell. The lively young creature took on a somber aura, and he could almost feel the poignancy of her emotion trapped within his ribs. The ghost tried to breathe, but he could feel only water pooling into his lungs. Her sadness vanished and she cast her gaze on him once more, playfully this time, with adoration. Something in him stirred and the ghost turned away from her, unable to look on the face that he had – in fact – left behind. “I think he's wrong,” she affirmed in that same soft, song-like tone.

“I love you, Raseri.”

A fondness changed her features. It morphed into something that he had taken advantage of on numerous occasions, but still he knew it. It was an expression that he had seen many times. The ragged brute could recall it well, but when she looked to him, her colors began to change and distort. The white hood that was painted over her face and skull had turned to ink. Rust marked the backs of her ears. The gold of her body was bleached into a pale ash and she became spindly and wicked. Moth's face met his own, and his mouth gaped as he watched the sun strike her eyes, turning them from briny green to canary yellow. Moth existed no more; he was staring into the eyes of Caiaphas. The waves crashed louder, and the cry of gulls overhead rattled him. The desert landscape was vanishing and before long, it was changed to a greyscale backdrop, snow on the earth.

The penetrating ache of winter gripped his body, and the ghost would have groaned against it if he were able. Instead, he let the world sink its fangs into his flesh and grip him tight. If this was death, he could only imagine that it was all that he deserved. He was the captain of a mighty vessel, and it was sinking to the depths of the sea. Of course, it had not been intended for him to escape; he was to capsize with it.

Pain wracked his figure. Water was all that he could sense, though his eyes remained tightly closed. The wraith only wanted to escape back to the Sunstone; he wanted to feel the wretched, arid heat against his tired body. The visions did not return to him. The waves tossed once more, and his ragged frame was pitched against the frigid sand with a sickening slosh. Kierkegaard did not move for some time. He felt the water as it pushed against the shoreline and his decimated frame. The ghost was dead. He knew that he could not have survived the plummet into the swell, or the harsh beating and churning of the ocean. The Demonte-Sairensu was not as young as he had once been, and the world did not owe him any favors, and so he had anticipated his end.

But it was not an end that was granted. With a garbled cough, he spewed water onto the shore and vomited what seemed to be an endless slew of saline and brine. Air rushed to his lungs, and at once his eyelids fluttered open; a burning fire against the backdrop of dismal grey.