Desreal: take the long way home; Marshall

Many dark and sleepless nights have I been a companion for owls.
He has found him, she tells her bear-companion as both their gazes chase after the blue swiftness that is her daughter (no - not mine, not ever, she tells herself) as she drifts in and out of the green solace of the glade. She is then wracked by coughs that come in quick succession and she leans on the bear taking strength from his presence alone and the feel of his rough fur against her own. Are you well? Kangiich, distressed, asks her and she shakes her head. This is our price for failure, in time, I will be well again. And then she hears it - more coughing and a subdued choking that tears at her heart with strange claws from no animal that she recognizes; her daughter is ravaged by the same plague and bears it worse than her mother does. She coughs and coughs and a little blood trickles from the corner of her mouth, but it is a thing that neither Raven (nor even Marshall) can heal and she bears her child’s suffering in a silence stranger than the agony that rends her heart in two. Go to her, I’ll be fine. she assures him and the bear does her bidding with great reluctance, though he wraps the yearling in a great bear-hug and holds her close to his warm, furry body.

Raven closes her eyes and waits, smiles a little through the pain of her swollen tongue and a throat too sore to produce sound. “I look forward to it,” she tells the stallion, though she projects no image of a smile or of the sight he’ll soon enough see. She thought perhaps, that she ought to prepare him but does not wish to spoil his good fortune at having become a seer too, much earned, and thus, finding his own companion amongst the animals of the world. Her coughing has quieted and they talk with their thoughts that she has no need of her mouth and thus, keeps it closed in a tight line that often breaks into a halfhearted smile to show she is trying despite the pain and the plague that sickens her blood. She smiles then, at the sight of the sea otter and the stallion. “Well met Kolun,” and she knows that with their minds linked - hers and Marshall’s - that the sea otter will hear it. Kangiich is unwilling to loosen hold of Raven’s child but lifts a paw in greeting to the whisker-waggling of the otter, saying to Raven, “I’ve eaten his kind before, but no more.” Raven smiles but does not laugh as she fears the coughing it would bring on her. She does manage to sigh, though.

“Congratulations on becoming a seer, and on being safe from the Elementals this time around. I wish our meetings could always be a joyous occasion but at some point, you know I’ll want to discuss ways to retrieve two of our stolen Wolves. I know too, that we have thieved from your shores, your Shadow.” Raven pauses here, memories darkening her face but not her mind as she keeps them artfully at bay, but if one thing surfaces from that dark tide, it is the brief face of the sea’s Shadow then it passes. “We have lost our king too, and until someone else is appointed I cannot, in good conscience, make any deals with you that will see our lost Wolves or your lost Jaeger home. Not yet…” she knows he is safe from her ill plight and she reaches out to nuzzle his neck lightly. “Oh Marshall, is any of this ever easy or simple?” and she feels an old restlessness steal over her, a need to leave and she looks then, to the bear and the yearling in his embrace and sighs again. Perhaps even thinking of a stallion that she has often gone in search of and never found, only traces - even here - that are faint and charred.

Seer - Earth II - Totem