Twenty-nine – 01

[This post is from Matt’s point of view, even if it doesn’t actually seem like it.]

His hands were cold, colder than the rest of him, anyway. His world was dark, but far from quiet. He could hear the sound of waves against rocks, against the sand, could hear the gulls calling to each other on the lonely shore. The bark of the tree he leaned against was rough but not uncomfortable and he tilted his head back to rest against it, feeling the breeze against his face and smelling the salt on the wind.

                He could still feel the echo of the spirit that had ridden him, that had subsumed him. There would always be a little piece of that spirit, that anima, grafted onto his own soul. He understood that now. Even as Cíar mac Dúbhshláin had returned to himself, so too would there always be a piece of another within him—and, in some ways, he was grateful for that. He had more strength with that bit that wasn’t his own than he’d had alone. It seemed that way, at least.

                They would come looking for him soon enough—his sister, her husband, the clans. They would come looking and they’d find him soon enough. Perhaps it would be little Ériu that found him, with her voice like the music of finely-wrought silver flutes and the smile he knew she saved for him even without ever seeing it. Finn and Brighíd were going to have their hands full when she was older, especially when it came to men vying for her hand—regardless of whether she was born of their clans or not.

                The orphaned wolf pup that had become inordinately attached to him whined softly, curling into a tighter ball against his hip, tucked beneath the wool of his cloak. He reached down to rub at its ears, a faint smile curving his lips.

                Sometimes he needed this—the quiet, the space, time away. It gave him time to think, to sort through the fragments of memories, the things he could remember from the time he wasn’t himself. Some of it he wanted to remember more than he wanted to forget.

                He felt a breath against his ear.

                “I miss your face,” a woman’s voice said, less a whisper than a rasp, a sound that set his nerves jangling, the pace of his heart suddenly that of a stampeding herd. It was a mix of fear and desire that soured his stomach even as it pushed him to the limit of his control.

                Cíar mac Dúbhshláin opened his eyes and saw nothing, but smelled the scent of her on the wind, his former captor and so much more.

                So much, much more.

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