[Training] against the tide

DEIMOS Delivered from the blasts Long before, the water had been another source of respite, peace, and repose. It had been brushstrokes of power and condemnation. It had been crashing, gnarled waves singing of oblivion and prowess. It had been roaring, then gentle, a varnishing of his senses as he dove beneath its rippling invocations, as he strived to make it his own. Then it’d been another source to recall his loss, and he’d turned away from it – built plagues and gravesites overlooking its wares, but only because the rain had needed it, required it. Now the sun poured its way in and reminded him that loss wasn’t always so damned permanent, that it in order to grow and prosper he could afford himself the luxury of looking up into the light. The ache in his muscles nettled along his senses, and he took one last shuddering sigh before treading water, maneuvered by the waves, by the currents, by the flow of time and space. It was a stark reminder of how everything eroded except the undulations themselves. He was eventually pushed back along Ronin’s favored rock and rubble, allowed the water to coil around him and send him back from where he’d came (but with a promise that he’d return – determined, a jaw set, a resolve mustered). He swept his tangled mane out of his eyes with one hand, rested his back against a boulder, and finally heard Ronin’s voice, snagged with a grin, over the thunder of the rushing deluge. He hadn’t expected a compliment – and blinked several times, water sweeping along his cheeks and dripping along the surface of his nonchalant features. Then his apathy wore away, a slight grin sculpting its way through the corner of his mouth. “I used to.” It’d been great for strength, for endurance, for fortitude, lost somewhere along the way. After that, his heart had been set upon swordplay and vanquishing every other foe sent to scar him, make him suffer. “Going again?” The warrior nodded towards the rivers outset, the rolling tide continuing its onslaught; never tiring, unlike them, for it had no other burden than to make it to the sea, to unite its one massive oeuvre. the last of a line of lasts