Yet I would choose this. I would still choose this over nothing.
Being on this Land hit different.
I was growing fond of the warm sunrises I caught every day while doing my routine, and the long sunsets that stretched along the hazy horizon.
The cool air against my golden skin was close to being called warm when compared to my homeland. Even my wolf form was somewhat hesitant on this snowless land. Good thing I could force it to like the lush and sandy land just as much as the cool snow.
Queen Mirana surely loved the sea—she was the goddess of it. Her daughter did, too. Every Sunday, I stayed guard, watching them build sand castles and swim for long hours.
I wasn’t sure why she needed my protection at all. The first time I watched her shift, my eyes almost teared up at the sight of her. The power of her. The beauty of her. She shook me through like Jeb’s earthquakes do when they destroy houses. Her skin turned bluish grey, her thick brown hair behaved like kelp—it moved around her in thick, poised waves. Her eyes appeared bigger and bluer. They gleamed, just like the little flaps that extended like lappets at the sides of her beautifully terrifying face.
She swam exceptionally fast, with her webbed hands and feet. One moment, her head dipped beneath the sea, the next, she would break the surface a great distance away without even leaving the trace of a ripple.
They used to make a game out of it. Elara would sit at the edge of one of the large pebbles, watching her mother disappear, then she would point, trying to guess where Mirana would emerge next.
I was sitting on the uppermost pebble once, watching Elara point and point and point. I could tell she was getting frustrated. Her giggles had long stopped, and with every miss, she huffed and grumbled. I climbed down the pebbles until landing on the one Elara was sitting on.
“May I sit?” I asked her.
“You may,” she replied. I took a seat next to her, our feet dangling above the calm water. Then she let out a long sigh. “Don’t get too excited, though.”
Was this kid really eight? I chuckled at the thought of her sounding just like my mother…or more like my cousin—my brother—Aegir.
Elara pointed. Wrong. I nudged her wrist, urging her to point east before her mother could see.
“I won!” she shouted, making sure her mother—and the whole world—knew it.
When Mirana dissolved into the water, Elara practically gave me her arm. Then she gave me a cheeky smile that was so wicked, for some reason, it made me think of the phrasepoor future husband. And then we—she—pointed and pointed and pointed.
Of course I would know from where she would emerge next. I’d know her from a moon away.
GALEN
PROMISES, PROMISES
The sun had long risen and I was in the middle of my cooldown when I scented, then glimpsed the little one. She watched attentively.
I gripped the wooden spear in my hands and stretched both arms up while extending my left leg. Then I caught sight of her as she grabbed a long twig from beneath the tree she was leaning against and moved closer to me. She mirrored my moves, or at least tried to. I squatted, she squatted. I stretched my legs, she stretched her legs. I lifted my arms, she lifted her arms. We ended the cooldown in a warrior pose.
“That’s it?” she asked, disappointed that the session was over.
“That’s it? I’ve been out here since dawn.”
The following morning she was there, waiting for me, at dawn. Again, she mirrored my moves. I let her. And when the manoeuvre was not yet possible for her to perform, she would invent something herself, a simpler version of my complex one. It was instinctive to correct her posture, to tell her when she should inhale and exhale.
I admit, I was starting to find her presence quite tolerable. All right, not just tolerable; it was rather nice. Although she did make me swear at times. Especially that time when I found her rummaging through my bag for weapons, a dagger already in her left hand. Her mother would kill me.
“Doing stuff like that will make your mother worry,” I had told her.
“My mother always worries,” she had said. “I see it, in her eyes.” Her reply stunned me.
“Then all the more reason to behave better,” I bit out.
I feared I might have been a bit too harsh on her, but then she said, “Well, I won’t tell mother that you swore in front of me, so I trust this will remain between us. She won’t have to worry that way.”
I couldn’t believe I had thought I would hate this kid—being the product of another man. But how could I hate her when her face reminded me of her mother and her wits mirrored Aegir’s? And was she truly eight years old?
Days turned to weeks, weeks turned to months, and months turned into a little less than two years. By then, we had already moved on to self-defence and archery. I admit, that little one had a sharp eye; she rarely missed her targets, and only ones that moved.
