What's been going on?

He remembered running. He remembered running.

Running.

A flash of light.

A smack of skin on skin, bone on bone.

A crash of thunder.

Feathers.

Feathers everywhere.

He remembered blood.

--

It was a still morning, cold and bitter and blue. Nizho blinked the haze from his steely eyes. A gummous numbness rolled up his arms from the calloused tips of his fingers. He did not feel anything in his body, and the frost threatened to grab hold of him. Gentle, white puffs of condensed breath were the only evidence that within his chest his strong heart kept beating.

Asavvi?

He blinked again, faster. Images flashed around in his mind and he inhaled with a sudden urgency. The sound hissed through his teeth and he opened his mouth, letting her name burst into the open glade.

"ASAVVI!"

Panic fluttered in his chest.

Mordecai. Castor. Vastra.

He spun, shoulders raised up with tensed muscles beneath the stress of realization.

He was alone, and he did not know where.



Nizho

The eyes are on fire
You are the unforecasted storm

Pattern Credits | Image Credits

He had left the farm in the early, ungodly hours before sunrise, relying on the moonlight and the dim shadows of things to navigate the night, bringing him back to the place where so much life was, trees, birds, wildlife. He tried not to focus on the creatures of the land so much, but the green here felt as if it called to his soul. That was hours ago. He should have gone back to the farm by now; there was always something that needed doing, and he always ended up smelly, sweaty, and hungry afterwards. So he didn't, and remained in the quiet greenness where things grew and thrived. The lightest layer of snow had fallen, looking almost like frost, and his footsteps disturbed those slightest hints of white.

He examined with one of his fingers a leaf of ivy that had entwined with a tree, looking at the way that its veins spread across the width of the leaf like roots. He listened to the leaf but heard nothing. He heard the wind, he heard the birds, he sometimes even heard the rustling of an insect. His senses told him that he was alone. But when he heard a voice, a single word, a scream, he knew that he was not.

He wasn't hurried, so he walked at a fast pace, letting his slightly too-big hand-me-down work boots make more noise than he would normally have allowed himself to make. The forest around him thinned until he saw the source of the disturbance. A man.

Yll looked at the man, his appearance, his distress and his manner of clothing and bearing that seemed different from what was the custom in the town some number of miles away. If the town could even be called that. He wondered if the man had just arrived as he had a few weeks ago. He suspected it, but he didn't know.

And so Yll watched and waited to see what the man would do next. He did not tense and prepare for an attack, nor did he respond to the obvious anguish and anxiety that rolled off of him in waves. The stranger was a big man, he could handle his own problems. Where he had come from, there was no sympathy or special allowances for ailments of the body or soul, only the press of reality and the next step forwards, and never backwards. And so he gave what was accustomed to be given where he had come from: nothing. But in his silence, he offered the premise of assistance, a listening ear, and the promise of companionship.