Chapter 1952: VOLUME FIVE – PART 2 – WHITE HEART

VOLUME FIVE – PART 2

Chapter 1 – White heart

The lapping waves of the sea on the shore, under a night’s sky animated by clouds and the moonlight piercing through it. A shorter beach than he was used to – and angrier waves than he’d seen before. A riptide greedy enough to gobble up half of the surface sand with every receding wave.

Messy footprints in that same sand, and handprints too. Evidence of frantic activity. The sea had worked with him, to conceal the worst of it, as he splashed through the shadows, and ruined his fine clothing with salt water.

It mattered not. He cast away his coat, then he cast away his boots, and he cast away his shirt, until nothing remained save for his three-quarter trousers, and a hard frown on his face.

A different man than he himself remembered. Much could change in a short amount of time, but this much? This much, he was a stranger to. Part of him shifted from it, dangerously so. Frantic moments of activity, wishing not for storm, but for sea. And here he was, right in front of it. His mind blank, and his heart trembling with a restlessness that he could not define.

Conversations from the past week filtered through his mind as he tried to relax. Sitting in the sand, the occasional quiver rocked his body. The slightest of little twitches. Enough to unsettle those little sea birds that flew too close, in search of oysters. Then, a more violent one, enough to send him all the way back to his feet if he wished it.

A fist to the leg, willing it to stop, hard enough to bruise himself. A grinding of his teeth. He didn’t like those twitches. After all these years, his body seemed finally ready to betray him.

A conversation with Nila, a long trail of thought, and they’d accidentally hit upon something that had best remained hidden. A memory of something that Oliver had kept firmly blocked from his mind. For did he not have the wisest excuse to? He had to keep it blocked, for Oliver Patrick had to keep moving forward. Beam could not rest, not in the way that Tempest could. He might slumber for a few hours at a time, but the man would never truly relax.

Until Nila, he could not even recognize the fact of his own tension. He knew not the quieter peace that was expected of most men. He lived his life as a clenched fist.

That week that Verdant had given them, racing through the mountains, the utmost in freedom, with the both of them blocking all things from their mind. That had been a dangerous thing. For next to the woman he loved, far away from the world, Oliver had begun to do exactly that – he’d begun to relax almost properly.

Then the twitches had started, the violence of them, waking Nila in the dead of night. Fear for him in her voice, telling of his whimpering. An embarrassment had come with that. Oliver had shook his head, dismissed it as a nightmare, and declared it unproblematic. But it had followed him with an increasing strength. It had haunted every night that he had been out there. More than once, did he awake to Nila’s fearful question of “are you okay?”.

A grunt in reply, always the same, despite the fear in his heart. He didn’t want to think on it. Not the source of the problem. Asabel – she was the source. He dwelled on that, was certain of that. The weightiest thorn through his heart. One too many. A loss of something far too important.

Until they had spoken, mildly at first, and then they had circled, as the most casual, most natural thing in the world, shocking each other in the process.

“I really didn’t think we’d last long after father died,” Nila admitted. “I thought I’d have to see mother die too, and the children along with her. I was pretty certain of it. I could already see them dead, like I saw him.”

Oliver had wordlessly patted her head, and pulled her in closer, wondering at the strength of the woman that he loved. All that they had endured together, and all that they had endured before that.

He had to wonder now, if it was simply something about the magnitude of a death like that of Asabel, and that of Blackwell and Skullic. One could not hope to deal with such a magnitude of loss without drawing upon all they had – and all they had forgotten.

They both found themselves pondering times past. Oliver was especially inclined to, so that he did not have to think upon the silver crown that always lay within hand reach, as a puzzle to be solved. He would spin it around and around in his hand, wondering where the answer to it lay, what it was he was meant to do with it, what route he was meant to take.

Then, he blundered. Just as Nila had, in admitting that to himself. The same shocked look that he’d seen on her face, as she exposed a part of herself she never dared to say to anyone. A milder line in conversation had taken Oliver there. The peace of the interaction, the comfort of the woman in his arms. An easy comparison to make.

“Oh, I used to get that with the foreman. He’d come in, just to check up on you in the middle of night. But that was never enough, so he’d strike you with the whip as well, just to kill two birds with one stone,” Oliver said, grinning at the comparison, then realizing that it was without humour.

Not entirely a strange comparison, when Nila had brought up the baker who’d done much the same, in shouting at the playing children as he marched his cart of goods towards the village centre – two birds with one stone again, so she had said.

The look in Nila’s eyes told him of the lacking humour, and his own smile had faded. A strange feeling in his heart. A frown that came with it.

Hi everyone, thanks for patiently waiting.

I’ve managed to find a bit of a balance with my current schedule, so I should be able to find a little bit of time to write again. We’ll see how it goes, but we’ll do our best!!