31 | Eternal Water

Against his best intentions, Eli sleeps for over a day.

His arm aches despite the lack of external wounds, and he is exhausted to his bones. In his youth, he knows he would not have been so weakened by such events, but such is the nature of his gained years. At first, he tries to push himself through it, to rise as soon as they next wake and try to get himself and the girl going but doesn’t manage it.

They are low on food and sleep and have both had too much fear. They must not dwell here long, especially with the unfamiliarity of the tree they’re finding refuge beneath, but Eli knows not what else to do.

In truth, he knows not even a way out of this place.

For the most part, Klia seems to be sleeping alongside him. Once or twice, when he manages to wake fully and eat some of the berries he has decided shall not harm them, he sees her pacing the sandy shore in much the same frustrated way she paced the river stone back before they discovered the way down into these depths.

“Do not go where I cannot see you,” he calls to her once, and she looks at him over her shoulder, thin face reminding him too much of the people in his life he once knew and loved so well.

Often, when he sleeps, he dreams of Abner. Just as often, Lyra is alongside him, but his memories of her feel fuzzier, lost to the haze of age and grief he’s tried so long and hard to put from his mind.

Eventually, he wakes a little more fully and sits beside the fire that’s almost died. Klia doesn’t seem to have the wherewithal to feed it, and Eli supposed she is awful young to consider it—and should not have to consider it, not with him around—as he places another of the scant pieces of dried wood upon it. Above him, the tree is silent as ever.

Eli has been waiting for something to happen, for it to make him regret taking shelter beneath its mostly-bare branches. So far, nothing unusual has presented itself.

“Do you grow differently down here?” he asks it, expecting and receiving no answer.

Klia is back down on the shore. Eli’s clothes are dry, and before he slept he had carefully pulled on a shirt not torn by the monster. His stomach gurgles, and he ignores it for the moment, heaving himself to his feet and swearing, not for the first time in the past day or so.

Picking his way down the shore, still barefoot on the strangely soft, dark sand, he comes to stand beside her. Her arms are folded, her eyes far away, a little furrow on her forehead as she thinks.

Eli checks for any changes in the magic.

Elijah Jyce

the Reaper, the Unknown, the Elder

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23/97 Buds | 2/10 Roots | 2/5 Filaments

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Stems

Bladewielder (15), Minddreamer (2)

It is concerning how low his roots are, but he feels close enough to death it isn’t a surprise. It has at least risen a little higher than the bare minimum it was when he woke on this shore. Still, he is not precisely in optimum shape to be tracking down his grandson and taking on the monsters which have stolen them.

The more he thinks on it, the luckier he realizes he was to have even freed Klia and himself from that strange floating Unknown, let alone with so few injuries. Even Klia’s few cuts and scraps aren’t much, though he’s sure they seem much more to a child of her age.

“I’m sorry for sleeping so long,” he says, though he wishes to lie right back down and sleep for a few more weeks. “We will try to find a way out of this place, do you still hear him?”

She shakes her head. Eli doesn’t know if this means they are too far away, or something awful has happened. He does not wish to voice the second opinion.

“Is it as back on the river? We need to get closer for you to find him?”

She nods, but there is still a frown on her features. She will not stop gazing out into the water. There is little to see. No matter how he looks, all Eli finds is the faint light reaching out for a small way into the calm of the lapping underground sea before disappearing into eternal darkness. Somewhere out there, the monster is beneath the water. Eli shutters to think how deep this place might be—the crushing, eternal darkness of frigid water, the caverns of water with no air which may run deeper and deeper below, into the center of their lands, where no true living things survive.

“What are you looking for, my dear?” he asks.

She makes the gesture he has come to associate with brother. Perhaps, it is a sign for Thistle's name.

Something occurs to him, and Eli works on making his voice as gentle as possible, when he says, “Do you see anything out there?”

Glancing sidelong up at him, he can see the consideration in her eyes. In many ways, she acts her age, in many others, he feels as if he is gazing into the soul of someone much older than her years. Perhaps this is what their world produces now: children who hear the strange magic and are not quite children in every way they should be.

Without breaking his gaze, she points out into the darkness.

Eli is slightly more certain of his idea. “Can you see in the dark, Klia?”

She blinks at him, and makes a series of gestures he realizes quite quickly are meant to tell him something. He feels his face scrunching into a frown, and before he can stop her, she pauses, looks irritated, and glances back at the fire. Her book is still drying beside it, hopefully not entirely ruined.

Frowning, she points at him, then at her eyes, then out at the endless water, open confusion in her expression.

“I can see nothing out there,” Eli provides.

She blinks as if this surprises her. She does see farther into the dark than he does, and not simply because her eyes are younger.

“What do you see?”

Bending, she writes in the sand, Monsters.

Chills drag across Eli’s skin for a moment, but he asks, “Living monsters?”

They do not move.

More frozen giants, perhaps. Or shapes she is mistaking for monsters. “Do you see the creature which dragged us down here?”

She shakes her head. Went to bottom.

It sunk beneath the waters, as he anticipated. “Do you see anything else?”

Waterfall.

Eli squints, then cocks his head, listening as hard as his old ears will allow. He hears nothing that would indicate running water and the sound of such would travel far. In the back of his mind, he wonders if the girl even understands what she’s saying, if she is mistaking all of this, or if the trees down here do mess with the mind. Perhaps this giant they have been sleeping under is feeding her dreams.

Carefully, wary of the answer, he asks, “Do you think we’re supposed to go across the water?”

She pauses, glancing back out, then looks up at him with a frown.

“You don’t know?”

She shakes her head and looks close to tears. Eli knows of little ways to comfort her. She is too young to be in such a situation and doubly too young to have to be supplying Eli with solutions. Even if she were to say yes, yes we should go across the water, there is little way for Eli to get them across. It is deep and unending, and there is only a little wood fallen around this place, barely enough to keep up their little fire. He cannot cut branches from this tree, if not only because they are all far too high for him to reach, but because the Order has corrupted, and the idea terrified him. Many trees still appear normal and harmless, unless provoked.

There is nothing he can say to comfort the girl, nothing that would not be a lie, but she is young enough to still be comforted by lies. Seating himself painfully on the sand beside her, he ruffles her hair.

“It will be alright. We have figured out our way so far, we will figure this out as well.”

She nods, then scoots up under his arm, her chin wobbling. Eli hugs her tight, unaccustomed to anyone wanting to be close to him but becoming quite fond of the girl’s cuddling nature. They sit this way until something shimmering catches Eli’s eye. It is washing up in the weak lapping of the water. Momentarily, he believes it a trick of his too-tired eyes, or some of the bees washing up he managed to lose.

Carefully, he leans over and reaches into the cool of the water.