5/13/2025, 9:23 PM
seven months |
The gentle swell and fall of the fields nearly seemed to shudder beneath the storm that loomed over them. Dusk was falling, but the sun had been blotted out for hours by the gathering malice of the thunderclouds. The wind flattened the tall, slender grasses and delicate petals of the wildflowers in bloom in rollicking waves against the hillside. It swept over the crest of a hill, diving down the other side to claw at handfuls of the boy’s fur. The sideways rain hadn’t yet soaked through its fur, but it did pelt its face with small, cold droplets. It would have stung, but for Trygve, it was just viscerally uncomfortable. It was a spring thunderstorm, and so it was unkind.
He knew he should have insisted on going with Akira. He’d told her he would protect her, but she had told him stay here and just a couple days. She must have figured it out at last, and he was just grateful he hadn’t watched the compassion bleed out of her eyes. The betrayal stung, but some part of him wasn’t wholly surprised.
It had waited, and then, it had headed south. It hadn’t expected to encounter the storm, but he hadn’t been paying attention. It had realized sometime walking away from the last place he’d seen Akira, that it was truly alone for the first time since the surviving the harrowing days after the sea had spat it out. It didn’t remember what came next - the sheer animal dread that the near-ceaseless lightning arcing between clouds overhead and unfettered downpour caused had finally dragged him back into his body.
Trygve dug his claws into the muddy earth and hauled himself to the crest of one of the shallower hills, watching a slender sapling bend nearly to touch the earth beneath the gales of howling, wet wind. In the morning, the storm would clear, and the meadows would flourish with idyllic life once more. But that meant surviving the night, and while he could weather the storm - he knew staying out in this was a gamble with his fickle health wiser avoided. The hills had little, as shelter went - but the lightning flashes illuminated in haunting contrast a tight-knit grove of aspen, old enough to stand against the severe weather. They would likely not protect from the rain too much, but they would serve as a windfall. The chimera lowered his skull, leaning into the howling winds as the storm thundered overhead, close enough to rattle in his bones. It knew fear familiarly. This, however, inflicted on him an almost comforting awe.
![[Image: trygve-chirpeax.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/vBkzDQZV/trygve-chirpeax.png)
