Ni'Srilan: The Desert: and yet we make our escape

When they reach the edge, exhausted and – yes – terrified, Anatole needs a few moments to regain his composure. Where his home once stood, there is nothing – there would be nothing – and he knows he has lost all of them, all of it. His fire burns and sputters and smokes and he doesn’t know how long it will last but he cherishes it, and the feel of Ilium’s mouth in his dark mane. “Damn,” he says – outloud this time because who would have thought that it would go down like that?

Holden is broken – that much is obvious. He doesn’t speak, he only trembles against Anatole’s side, his youth showing in every nuance. His water gushes off his sides, spirals down his feet and you cannot tell where Element ends and Tears begin. Mother, he thinks over and over again – he realizes he will never know what happened to her, never be able to say goodbye.

But she had promised him, hadn’t she? – in his dreams, she would always be there, like the dreamweaver she’d been for so long.

And so Anatole dips his lips into his younger brother’s forelock, between his ears, and whispers, “It’s never going to be over.” Holden doesn’t quite know what he means, but he too wonders where they will go from here. Collapsing alongside Ilium’s children, he waits to hear.

“My father came back… just before it ended, he saw Nyota. I should like to go and meet him.”

His attention is on Ilium now, his neck slipped under hers as he watches the empty remnants of their home. This was the only place they had known – where they had been born, where they had grown, where they had learned to wield their magic and play their games and Anatole was afraid – so afraid – now that they had lost it. How were they to feel at peace anywhere else, when they were so clearly marked by the Element?

But they had made it out alive – together – and that would be enough. For now. He unhooks his head from Ilium’s and his face softens –

“It won’t be home… but it will be a start.”