Lost In Grey
{Mihal}

.:+:.

There's voices in the fog. Shadows rippling as they dart through the mist, stirring up currents in their quake but weightless- formless- all the same. Shadows whispering things from the thick clouds, far-off and muted, and yet insistent as they called out. Mihal could hear them, echoing all around all around, their voices so near to being clear enough to make out what they said, but still infuriatingly muffled, and just enough they escaped them time and time again.

Mihal's frustration and yearning to grasp the words had the mists swirling feverishly, twisting around them with a fervor, heavy and damp. The moisture soaked into the esk's fur where it never did, their steps through the thick curtain sluggish and slow as the fog seems to weigh them down and spin them around in circles where it never has. They're wading through it as if it were a sea made of tar, one that's pushing and pulling in all directions, dragging them further inward and further from any sense of direction Mihal tried to cling to. They were lost, circling aimlessly with no light to guide them and only the whispers teasing on all sides, muddying the senses and confusing them all the more as they were lured this way and that... Their Elemental that usually did as they willed and ensnared others, now betraying them instead.

The sand under Mihal's feet shifts soundlessly as they pad forward, chasing another incomprehensible whisper from the depths- disjointed, and hauntingly familiar all at once. This is a voice Mihal knows, from so long ago. A voice they have not heard outside of buried memories for what feels like an age, and a voice they'd not heard on the air with their own ears for much longer than that.

The voice of someone lost to them- someone who abandoned them- though they have now forgotten their name, and even their face. But the anger remains, woven into the fog and mists and taunting now with its fury and despair where it had taunted so many others before and led them astray.

There are things here in the mist, bits of emotion molded into those shadows that are dodging about on the edge of their vision. Specters and phantoms built up of Mihal's own malcontent and unrest, barbed fingers digging into unsuspecting souls searching for a lonely light in a sea of muddled gray, only to have their hopes dashed along with their bones and souls against cliff and stone. These things are all anger and tightly wound turmoil knotted together to form something of their own will- sentient, but obedient in the way in which they carry out Mihal's unrest and nothing else.... Well, until now.

Mihal stops abruptly, a whisper and a call off to the right tugging insistently at their center, urging them to move toward it, to seek it out and chase it down even though they know it will lead to nothing. Mihal has to force themself to remain fixed in place, to find themselves suddenly stationary where they'd unwittingly let their emotions get the best of them, and lead them further into the damp gray curtain surrounding.

Mihal knows that voice, it's been an age or more, but they know that voice. It's buried deep in their soul, carved into their bones when their form was still that of something else. And yet that voice is etched so deeply into every fiber of their being it does not matter the shape or the body- even in this cursed existence and stripped of nearly everything they once were, Mihal cannot escape knowing that voice.

It calls again, somehow closer, and somehow more muffled too, but it's more urgent, more pressing, and Mihal forgets any intention of staying still. The tattered fabric of the scarf tied to their tail ripples in the currents of the mist as the esk jerks themself around toward the call, feet kicking up sand and spinning, searching. There comes the unadulterated need to find them, just the same and just as profound as it had been those last days, welling up all over again and washing over Mihal like waves crashing violently overhead, fighting to drag them under and down far, far below.

They are off again, charging through the endless sea of gray, chasing after the voice with a fervor and forgetting again that it's not real, that it's just old memories and hurt bubbling up with the backing of an Elemental and all its malign, tumultuous power. They just keep running, their footprints in the sand overlapping a million times and more as the fog and the voice they're seeking has Mihal going around and around in dizzying circles, but they don't notice it. Mihal doesn't notice the tracks crossing, doesn't notice the never-ending back and forth and the fruitlessness of the searching. It's consumed them all over again, and they're going to follow the tiniest, faintest trace left of it, all the way to the ends of the earth if-

Mihal skids, feet slipping in damp sand as the beach suddenly drops off in front of them, the fog splitting open and leaving visible the cliff-side they'd just about run off of. The ocean crashes against the sharp rocks below, the roar of the waves that had been muffled by the heavy moisture in the air suddenly as loud as can be. Sand and pebbles scatter under their feet, cascading down into the frothing sea, tearing holes through the thin layers of the fog sinking down over the edge and into the roiling depths below.... and all in an instant Mihal is looking out across a horizon of nothing but pitch black as far as the eye can see, the whispers of the voice swallowed by the crash of the waves, gone and lost.

Again

The fog pokes and prods at Mihal's back, whispering by their feet as it sinks over the edge and away, dumping its twisted, roiling power into an ocean just as tortured. The lighthouse to their left is glowing again, a bright light in the dark that grows more luminous as the fog drops slowly away and the star-speckled sky overhead starts to peek through a curtain of clouds. The light of the fire up in the tower refracts off the water and specks of moisture clinging to the esk's fur, dazzling a moment as a spin of the light stretches over their lonely figure atop the cliff for a moment, piercing through the last of the lingering fog like a fire burning away infection.

The shadows leading Mihal around in circles and the voice buried beneath will come back, the fog returning with a fervor and plunging this shoreline into dismal, unending gray, blocking the light and leading more astray- just as it did tonight, with them.

Mihal tilts their head up toward the tattered clouds growing further frayed, a lingering sensation of ache and despair that hits them upon breaking free of the fog quickly turning to indignation and fury.

Yes, the fog will come back. It will lead more awry, hide the light, confuse and torture those unlucky enough to be lost in it, or be at the mercy of the sea with no beacon to guide them away from the teeth of the cliff. It will make others chase things that aren't there, conjure more shadows to dart at the edges of their vision, whisper things they have no choice but to seek out and will continue to until they hit the edge, or crash against an unyielding rocky face of the cliffs.

It will come back, it always does, but next time it will not come for them.

Not again