Ald cursed the All-Carver (Mother’s mother, Father’s father) when he woke up feeling every last fiber of his body: from the claw of his toes to his pulsing eyelids, no part of Ald escaped pain. Darkness surrounded him while the weak morning sun outside fell on Ulgamo’s scalp and shoulders, making him envy Ald’s long night of sleep as he swept the deck of The Menagerie and cursed Nalaq’s softness. Nalaq hadn’t left her compartment in all day, for she liked Fuldra, and wondered what was of her. Fuldra, laid at the bottom of the Worldvein, despised the company of fishes, algae and misshapen alike, as they regarded her as nothing but another funny-shaped rock in that decrepit field of statues Wintertoll had gleefully sowed, instead of a Felsian sister desperate for help, wishing she was, indeed, alone, and not trapped along all the siblings whose hands she had tied, against whose backs she had pressed the point of a blade: Fuldra had earned the privilege to be forever cradled in silent hatred.
Ald scratched his cheek and his eyes shot wide open. He screamed. He could scream! Despite everything hurting, he still was in possession of both flesh and skin. “Alive!” He shouted after making out the latticed pattern etched on the forgewood of the compartment he had been stashed in. Cramped and uncomfortable because the crew would not bother taking him to a proper bed, but alive.
He hit the roof thrice to signal anyone above to move, clumsily opened the trapdoor, and, proffering moans of pain, clambered out of the compartment. They looked at him as if a dead body walked among the crew. “Where are …ugh …my things?” He asked to nobody in particular.
Ulgamos came to him, still holding the Mop, and pointed him to the place where he had stashed his belongings. “That one right there, two from the edge.”
Without delay nor particular haste, Ald half-walked, half-crawled his way to the compartment. Moving hurt. Breathing, too. He dragged himself across the ship with the grace of a pyroclastic flow. He wasn’t injured, he knew this pain to be a result not of damage to the flesh, but of trauma of the soul. He had to walk despite it, because, as far as he knew, it could never go away. And Ald tried not to think about it, that, from that moment until his death, every muscle of his could be screaming in pain.
He finally reached the piece of the boat where his weapons and had been stowed. He sat in front of it and stared out northwards. A clear-colored line, too thin for a cloud, separated water from the sky at the horizon. He closed his eyes and smiled. He had survived the trip on the Menagerie. He was going to step on the shore, and walk away from the Worldvein or across it, depending on where Unkindness wanted to lead him. His feet were going to sink in the sand and he would fall on his knees, a bow to the wilderness. He would need to remain aware of his surroundings, for the misshapen could sprout from anywhere, anytime.
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Even then. He had no time to daydream, so he reluctantly recovered his possessions from the storage and strapped the scabbards around his waist. He wished for babies to have rained that year. He wished to be at home sitting under a tree on his orchard, watching Kali run around without a care. He wished to be sweating beside his forge, repairing a tool the working of the land had not been kind with. He wished he had gotten to meet Gleur under minor circumstances, to make friends with him in a reality where Felsia wasn’t at peril.
He wished to breath in, out, lie down, and with tear ducts ablaze, cry silently over the deck boards. Why had she picked Ald Elvisatcaught, out of all Felsians. This had to be some macabre lottery, as he was no different from many of his farmer or blacksmith peers, as his heart was no purer than the ones of most of his siblings. He imagined Unkindness had been throwing darts at board while wearing a blindfold, and fates decreed his name struck.
A fish jumped onto the deck and began writhing with desperation. Its silver scales gleamed under the morning sun, enticing Ald: as if like a mirror had jumped out of the river, just to suffer in his company. The fish was about to die by asphyxia, a fate so horrible. It was, furthermore, a needless death, but Ald could let it happen. He would not be a villain if, by inaction, he let the fish die. Someone else could save the fish, even if the others were further away, and many hadn’t noticed. But couldn’t he say the same of Felsia as it agonized? Most of his brothers and sisters waited for someone else to bring back the rains, or for the issue to solve by itself. They didn’t know Father was possibly dead, so Ald could not even blame them, as he couldn’t blame anyone but himself if the fish chocked its life away.
Hoisting himself up without major fanfare, Ald shuffled his feet until he was next to the fish.
At his feet struggled a soon to be dead creature. A kick would save it.
The fish didn’t think much of the situation: it just engaged in an instinctual strife against the atmosphere, gasping for water as its gills dried up and collapsed on themselves.
Felsia or a fish; a fish that was Felsia. Maybe saving the fish would, in a way, save Felsia. Maybe sacrificing the silver fish would, conversely, kill off Ald’s last hope and spare him the suffering of the almost inevitable failure of his mission.
“Leave me alone,” Ald begged as he took the squirming animal in his hands. Then he cast it back into the river, watching sadly how the long body spun in the air until it hit the surface of the Worldvein. Soon the little waves created by the hands as they dragged The Menagerie onwards collided by the ones brought forth by the fish’s impact with the water, and that was the last trace Ald saw of a fish he would forever call Hope.