ADARA

Saltspray crashed against the wooden hull of the galleon. Wind pushed against the multitude of sails, with the crows nest high above, with a small trellis keeping the Wardens on watch safe from the elements. Ropes dangled and fastened onto metal clamps and rocked with the system of magitek pulleys. Nausea bit at her temples at the constant tide and the sway of the ocean, but she tucked herself on the stairway up to the front of the boat, where the bow stretched into the imposing jaws of a draconic creature, its wings spread against the front halves as added protection. Storm Wardens emptied out the deck of barrels in the way, lowering them into the storage hold with some barking out orders, though nowhere close to Yuven's level of concise efficiency. The sound of the seagulls disappeared with Sivaport out of sight on the horizon for the days at sea they spent, the two statues holding their hands out in goodbye.

I already miss solid ground. Adara held onto the hope that Euros would soon be in sight, the wondrous home of the Storm Warden Order, spoken of in reverence as a beacon in the utter darkness the Derelicts brought into the world. Her legs trembled when another wave pressed itself against the side she sat closest to, and she stuck her tongue between her teeth. Krakens. Leviathans. Powerful creatures of the sea. Garren's stories boast of the highest of tides and warriors against all odds, giants in spirit. Shanties sung underneath the lulls in the ocean's twisting moods, though from what Maria told her, the carefully constructed runes on the keel kept them safe from the worst of the tempest beneath them — a cautionary measure against Derelicts. Metal rusted. Wood rotted.

Adara found herself entranced at the four harpoon guns at all corners of the ship topside, tipped with gold along the metal arrowheads. Near her, another Storm Warden checked the rope, humming a song with a split of Hanekan words between their teeth as they nodded at one barked order and tugged on the clamp, sending magick through the magitek. Maria Ollain went up and down into the passenger cabins every so often with a quick word to her fellow Storm Wardens. If the sun had an avatar, it'd be the woman who commanded a confident, driven presence. Though, I do see her talking to Yuven in his cabin a lot, on the rare chances they have the door open. Hm...

Another foam of nausea blasted into her stomach, so she retreated downstairs in a vain attempt to curb the sensation of movement without actual motion. Wood creaked with her footsteps and the sailing of the boat. The comfortably sized corridor went straight to another small staircase which went further down into the ship's lowest bowels and the storage hole in the middle. Several of the doors lined themselves with pale gold runes of protection from the way their tails curved into complete circles to protect the Warden cabins within. Adara stopped in front of the sole open one, where Yuven sat on the edge of the bed with a cup nestled in his hand, with Maria sitting in the small chair tucked into the eating table attached to the wall, a thick tome under her elbows. Both of them looked up at her approach. "Hello."

Yuven's brow creased and he shut his violet eyes away the moment he pressed the cup to his lips and the liquid within slipped past them. He shuddered and put the cup beside Maria's arm, who raised an eyebrow at him, where the sun caught the amber intensity, but Yuven demanded attention by his mere tone of voice. "What is it, Adara?" he asked, using her name once more. "Is the fresh, salty air too overwhelming for you, having been landlocked all your life?" His nose scrunched with a wry grin, but he frowned when Maria placed yet another cup in his hands. "Ai, Myl'la, I just drank the last one. What is this for?"

"Some people don't take to the sea that well, Yuven," Maria joked, then nodded at Adara. "Though, if it is too much for you, Miss Adara, we have some ginger strips in storage. It should quell any seasickness, but my best advice is to not trap yourself down here. It won't help as much as one assumes it will." Yuven peeked into the cup, and Maria glanced at him. "You have to drink it, Yuven," she said, or ordered moreso, and to Adara's surprise, Yuven gulped it down then slipped his tongue between his lips with a soft, disgusted scoff.

"I just slightly feel slightly nauseous, but..."

"Better than how Fenrer was doing earlier," Yuven mumbled onto the rim of the cup, and his feathers shivered when he braved another sip. "Ijav'syl hamara, Maria. Could you not add something to make it more palatable?"

"You know I can't just add things to brews on the off chance it'll stagnate the effects," Maria replied as Yuven leaned on the back of his bunk and gazed at the sun's avatar with a distant expression. "Listen, I know you're worried about Fenrer, but I've done what I can for him to make the journey a bit more bearable."

"What's wrong with Fenrer?" Adara mused.

"I was waiting for you to ask that. I'm shocked at your ability to restrain yourself, and dare I say it... almost impressed," Yuven said.

"Good to see you're back to normal." Adara folded her arms and adjusted the strap of her bag across her chest. "And you don't get to talk to me about restraining myself."

Maria closed the book, then smiled at her, radiating warmth where Yuven radiated blistering cold when he echoed her position with his arms against his chest. "Well," she replied. "On top of his pneumonia, he was very uncomfortable when I got you all on the boat. I damn near had to fight him to keep him down." Her gaze swept to Yuven, who dodged the silent question. "Yuven, when King Reyn told me the state he found Fen in..."

Yuven's fingers trembled against the cup, but he steeled his expression building on the blocks of shame. "I know he is lucky to be alive," he muttered. "No thanks to my help." His feathers thinned across his slightly lowering ears when he scowled. "I know there is a lot you want to know, Maria, but..." Adara stepped back when he glared at her. "I shall share more details when we're not out at sea."

Maria blinked, then sighed with a slow nod. "Okay, but you're going to have to explain things to the Warden-Commander eventually. If Storm Warden's are getting attacked—" Yuven sucked in his lips, the tips of his fangs pushing against them, though not a speck of anger set the violets aflame in his previous rage. Instead, vulnerability swept across the pale purple foam. Maria nodded once more then turned back to Adara. "If you want, Fenrer's in the next room over, I'm sure he'd welcome someone to talk to that's not just me prodding at him. I'll be checking on him once I'm done here." Her hands rested back down on the thick tome, written in a neat, but elongated scrawl, with a pen slipped inside its spine. Alchemical formulae bounced between her temples, along with the notes squished into the margins along the sides.

"I'll do that," Adara said, and expected Yuven to deliver a customary verbal bite. He tucked his legs underneath him, bundled up in the blankets of his bed, and not even the shake of the waves disturbed the frame. "And, Yuven—"

"We'll talk later." He bit down on the cup, the fangs driving into the wood. Adara took that as a hard dismissal and left the room, closing the door behind her.

Wood continued its creaky notes in her ears as she shuffled over to the room next door. Her thumb clicked into the runelock. Silver twine danced into the edges, and she pushed it open to take a peek, remembering the last time she disturbed Fenrer when he was not expecting company. And...Get that out of your head. It swung out of her hands at Fenrer's slumped shape on the bed, tucked in the corner, the same set-up as the last cabin. Out of the porthole, the sun shone bright over the white foam from the crashing waves slipping against the boat. A diamond-shaped runelight stuck itself to the ceiling, intaking the very same energy of the day. "Fen?"

He rolled over onto his other side, then lifted himself by his elbows with a quiet word in Hanekan. Adara used her foot to close herself from the creaking sounds of the corridor. "Adara?" He pushed the heel of his palm into his cheek and blinked at her with weary intent. "I thought you'd be up on the deck..." He scooted to sit on the edge of the bed, and Adara flinched at the sway.

"I'm sorry if I disturbed you," she said and sat down in the chair across from him, though found her gaze trailing the loose-fitting gray shirt he wore. "How are you feeling?" she asked and brought her attention back to his face. Green spirals dulled with dying stars, but he lifted them to hers. Adara jolted at his silence. "I guess that's a stupid question, isn't it?"

Fenrer smiled with a soft inhale. "It's not that," he said, cautionary. "I am feeling about the same as I was before." He drove his fingers into the edge of the bed when the boat groaned, buoyant over the water, his face twisted into discomforted dizziness, but his laugh came out soft. "Would that this was in different circumstances..."

"What do you mean?" Her heart remained a fluttering butterfly in a snow-white garden, but the book in her bag weighed heavy with someone else's words of love and hope. "By circumstances?"

Fenrer's gaze trailed across her. "In the Ancient faith, it is said that everything happens for a reason, that everyone is born right when the world will soon need them the most," he explained, resting a hand over his oath necklace, shining with pale ice within the swirling green star. "I only ask one thing, if I had done something different... would we find ourselves in this circumstance?" He went silent, and Adara mulled over his words, but the train of thought trailed off course when he blinked and smiled at her. "Ah, just my musings though. I like to believe that things turn out for the better, to balance any trial we come across..." His head slumped against his shoulders, a loop of exhaustion sinking into his strong, lean frame.

"What doesn't kill us makes us stronger?" Adara questioned Yuven's way of living from what she learned over the course of their journey.

"That is the ideal." Fenrer nodded. "And what gives us the strength to push on, to keep walking when despair seeks to swallow our souls." His eyes shut in one slow movement. "... do you remember what I told you at the Summit?"

His words which continued to rock and demonstrate the impossibility of her sudden change in life. "That you believed," she drew over her lips. "You took my hand and told me that for every dusk there must be a dawn on the horizon. Suffering can't be avoided, but it is never hopeless." Warmth grazed over lips, and she sucked them in when Fenrer nodded. "Over and over have you demonstrated that, Fenrer. I don't think there was anything you could've done to change this circumstance. You showed me that when you healed that tree back in Tebora, reminding me as to why I held onto that hope of leaving. We're alive, isn't that enough?"

We're together... can that be real? For a second... I wanted a moment to last forever.

Ashen tension crossed his cheeks when he sighed. "It is enough, I am just confused, left in this fog..." he replied, then his smile returned, a little more dim than she remembered. "Our journey gave me much to think about." His attention drew to the diamond-shaped rune above their heads.

You're not the only one on several accounts. Adara pushed her elbow against the book, signed with Tara's memory. It cracked the silence in her throat, and she drew out the book, causing his attention to snap back to her. "I promised to tell you this story, didn't I?" she asked through her smile, then set it on her lap, heavy with her childhood dreams. "Fenrer, I... I've never really thanked either of you for getting me out of Tebora. Out of that situation where I didn't even remember Derelicts existing, not realising what I was or the world I wanted to belong in." Her fingers clasped its edges when she held it up in front of her. "You were right back then too, it's not always Derelicts that can cause that grief." Shoulders tucked against her neck, she withdrew onto the bank of the lake, so far out of reach. Her hand wound around Tara's, who beamed at her with hope sprinkling in her grey eyes. Her past and reality clashed together when Fenrer gazed into her face, or into her aura. But what am I wanting to hide from him? He's already seen that sole happy memory I had.

"Do you wish you didn't remember at all?" he asked, softly.

Adara shook her head. "Not if it meant not experiencing this, I want to believe in it... and what might come after no matter how hard."

Fenrer's lips parted in muted surprise. It died on his face when he lowered it to the ground between them. "Well, I'm not going anywhere," he said with a gentle, almost playful smile. "If you want to tell me it, I will hear it... but there's hesitance fluttering around you." Starry spirals spun around his pupils when his attention drifted around her. "If it's too personal to you, Adara, I can wait."

I need to go back to that lakeside, where I made those lilies bloom and you told me that it was beautiful, to understand why that turned out the way it did. Adara chewed on her lower lip. I want to go back, but... where do I really want to go back to? Her finger hooked underneath the first couple pages, and the parchment crinkled when she opened it to reveal the words on the page. "I promised, Fenrer," she said. "It's just a story, and you said you wanted to be distracted." Palm flat against the first chapter, her ribs pierced her heart and dug the thorns deeper and deeper the more she tried to read the tragedy of the Dragon Knight's life. Her life. Tara's life. Her fingers dug over the edges of the top, and ice encased her in the blizzard's cruelty and despair. Her knees trembled straight to her hips, but she stopped when Fenrer reached his hands out to lay them over hers. Warm prickles swept over her skin, and she relaxed her grip on the bleeding rose.

"You shouldn't force yourself if you're not ready," he said with a smile. "I'm not so desperate for a distraction that I wish for you to tear into a story that you barely want to hear yourself." His warm hands lifted off hers, and he settled them back into his lap, but the sunlit love remained on her knuckles. "You can't see the dawn if you're too busy looking at the ground, I've learned. Life is full of small steps." He shuffled into his bed, a deeper frown on his face.

"Is that why you did what you did in Sungrove?"

Fenrer gazed at her. "Yes."

"Were you ready for that?"

Am I?

Fenrer smiled with a shake of his head. "Sometimes we never are ready, but nonetheless." He waved his hand in the air in front of him. "We still have to walk, but only at our own pace. You are not Yuven. I am not you. Neither of you are me. Our pace will be different, but we will have to walk." He tucked his blankets over his knees. "That's what Diiha told me a long time ago."

"Soren?" Adara frowned.

Fenrer nodded, heavier, with a thousand lifetimes cramped in his single one.

"I'm sorry you had to go through what you did."

Fenrer's smile softened. "It is okay. For a moment... I think he woke up from that moment he was left in, to the reality in front of him, and that was just enough for me to send him on his way," he said, his voice shaking with the waves outside. "That's all one really needs. He is at peace now, that is all I can hope for."

Light tore through necrotic flesh, and brought it back to life. Her heart slammed when Fenrer continued, "And, Adara?"

"Yes?"

"I know how hard it is to leave a moment, but we still must walk out of them. Not forget them, but continue on," he said. "I've... grown to care about you and I don't want you to torture yourself." His gaze drifted off to the left. "You aren't alone. Yuven and I are still here, and we're not going to just toss you to Euros and that's the last goodbye. When you're ready, I'll hear that story. And I'll tell you mine. Aye?"

Adara closed the book. "Okay."

Over the marble pathway of the garden, another bundle of words rose against the edge of her lips, tracing his own when he smoothed out his blankets without another word. It swelled over her tongue, for the first step, but she tasted mold in the air.

Decay swallowed her senses when Fenrer's hand ducked for the small compartment near his head when the waves grew blood-red teeth in torturous slow motion.