well someday soon when the spring brings the sun
i'll sleep, i'll finally
feel better when the winter's gone

The water hits her like violent redemption. Funny, how she’s sprinting into the water like she’s on fire when it is exactly what she’s been running from, letting it pour from her eyes like steady, small, insignificant waterfalls while sobs catch and release in her throat. Darkness engulfs the world as if the moon and stars that she had been running under had swallowed by something, maybe a whale, whose jaws opened far and wide and devoured everything without thinking about what it affected in doing so. There is nothing in the murky waters other than thin beams of moonlight that barely make it deep enough to kiss her sadden features. Her eyes are closed. There is nothing to worry about while she locks her tears away.
There are no sharks in freshwater. There are no bones in the small grove, tucked away not too far from the sea, close enough for Sikeax’s panic driven galloping to end in abruptly.
Here, she can think, regardless of Hobgoblin’s panicked cries for her, the fear she can feel pounding in her chest that is oddly of both of theirs, the only emotion the two can agree to share and feel together. He is trying to get to her, but the pace is slow, and she knows he is tired.
At the bottom of the World’s Edge, where everything suddenly gave way to the ocean, there had been bones. None of them were the kind that you choose not to blink an eye to, the kind that are just there because that’s how life works, the kind that makes you want to turn and run, that sends shivers down your spine and sets you into a primal instinct mode.
Except for Sikeax, it was different.
As a healer, one can turn a blind eye to death and simply go on with life pretending that it’s not there. People get sick and are wounded, she does everything that the Gods have given her rights to do, and they carry on, live lives and have families, become whatever they become. Through the years, she’s perfected this, and there should be, presumably, nothing to worry over.
But bones are different. She’s seen them live, hang out of bodies that are decaying before her very eyes and yet still BREATHING because how does life work after death, especially when all of her occurrences with the dead have been when they have been coming to get her. Amara, the bones in the marsh - Oh god, do they still walk? Do they still breathe? Are they going to find me because it’s all my fa-
“SIA!!”
He breaks her like the stone shatters a window, how an egg will burst when thrown far from the nest. Never once in their joined life has he cared to even call her Sia, something that is typically reserved for love and total fear, and now that he has, she thinks, or quite possibly just knows, that in the future there will no more of it.
To Hobgoblin, she is not Sia nor is Sikeax, the Sun Physician of the Dragon’s Throat who can’t get the cold facade of a doctor with his patient correctly, who wears too many of her emotions on her sleeve, the only daughter of two parents who never really fell in love and never worked hard to raise their child, the woman who cries over children she can’t save. To him, she is his other half, the fellow bearer of his feelings who right now is feeling endless panic in her head and her heart, the soul he had unwillingly been forced to entwine with that planted hate that budded into understanding once he matured.
And right now, she’s crushing him. He cannot bear the weight of her fear. He doesn’t understand and she is refusing to let him know why this is happening, why his head is in a panic and that one thing that would be insignificant to anyone is such a terrible, life-threatening thing to her.
His body sends ripples through the water, and somehow, she knows it’s him. There isn’t violent thrashing associated with swimmers, and his body is made for the ocean as much as she isn’t. He finds her in the darkness with ease, her horn a beacon he didn’t know he needed until now.
He pulls her back to reality with nothing more than a simple touch, pressing his long head against her shoulder for mere moments before his lungs ask for him to drag himself back to the surface.
Without hesitation, she follows, pulling herself from the deep without words and without feelings, and their bond, nearly always vibrant and full of life, dulls in the aftermath. Together, they break. She swims for land, and he follows, lazily sweeping his long body outwards to keep himself afloat as they move at a pace any other day he would have complained about.
She heaves her wet body onto land in silence, dripping water that luckily isn’t tears this time around. The ground is cool, the grind of rough roots along her coat a harsh reminder that yes, despite how dead she feels as of now, there is still a life to live and the world is more than willing to go on without her. Her crumbled up body rests with her head pressed against the earth, stomach leaning into the base of a tree, watching with her once so full of life blues as Hobgoblin lingers in the water no more than five feet from her, childishly creating bubbles.
They are frail and small, short-lived and bursting within a few seconds of leaving the water, but he doesn’t care. She is watching him with her full attention whether she chooses to admit it or not.
“Bubbles make You happy?”
No longer is she ‘Sia’ to him, now back to just ‘You,’ the person whom he is taking all of his effort and placing it into making her happy. Neither of them own up to who it is, but there is a faint spark, somewhere in the darkness that they make together, that flickers someone’s happiness, a smile that neither choose to wear.

OOC: In which I learn that Sikeax has PTSD from her involvement in the age-old wraith plot.
Hobgoblin is a Leopard seal for the majority of the post, but if you want to write it out that he was seen leaping into the pond or seen running from the endless blue to the grove, then that time period he was in his wendigo form.
Also, probs not important, but Hobgoblin is using his magic(for the first time!!) to make the bubbles.

This is an open thread! Feel free to come in with whoever you choose.

"Talk."