No pointed ears, no sharper canines, no off-coloured eyes, nothing peculiar in the way they move beyond exhaustion and cold and stiffness in their joints.
Joint pain, I can relate to.
My shoulders are stiffer than a corpse in winter, just from having my backpack straps tugging down on them for so long.
Now, that backpack is shrugged off and I get the slightest bit of relief—though it’s always temporary.
For now, I can just sit here and relax before the tide swallows the shore. Before then, we’ll get up and move on. As we always do.
I shift on the damp packed sand.
My backpack presses into the small of my spine as I try to lean on it. I don’t know if it’s the batteries wedging into my back, but it’s uncomfortable.
I draped my rain jacket over the bag when we first got here, since it’s not so cold, and I’m beginning to feel suffocated in all these layers all the time. But now, the rain jacket rustles and slips over the backpack as I try to get comfortable, and it’s annoying.
I give up.
I nestle into myself, chin on my tucked-up knees, arms around my folded legs. And I watch as, opposite me, Mika drops down onto the sand and baskets her legs. Her spine is straight, not a flaw to her posture, not like me when I basket my legs and suddenly turn hunchback.
She faces the water.
I look around for Samick. But he isn’t there, where his satchel lies on the sand, opened and parted, where he was just moments ago.
My neck twists painfully. I look up the shore to the general.
And there he is.
His back faces me.
Torchlight rolls over him, dancing on his tight leathers—tight with tension.
The general is small and slight, but now that I look at her, really look at her as a person almost, I can see why she is in her position. A lord overlooking almost a hundred male warriors crafted from bloodlust and sculpted from muscle.
She’s small, but she’s agile. She’s slight, but she stands as a picture of pride and power.
It’s her eyes that haunt me.
Even from across the shore.
Her eyes are voids, too bleak for any face, even the face of a fae.
She watches Samick. Not just listens to his words, she searches his face, his eyes, his soul for answers deeper than the ones he gives.
I have no doubt he’s telling her what’s happened since the prison—and maybe from a better perspective than what Rust would offer.
I wonder if he even tells the general that he killed Rust or if that’s been left out of the story.
Either way, he might be a while up there.
I shift onto my elbows, digging them into the sand, and slump on my bag. Still not comfortable.
Mika guzzles from her waterskin. The bloated leather belly of the container is recessing under her grip.
She draws the nozzle away from her damp lips with a breathy sigh.
“So long.”
Her voice is breathy and quiet. At first, it blends in with the gentle breeze brushing over the shore.
