Chapter 343: Follow me.

Chapter 343: Chapter 343: Follow me.

It’s...so still. And if it weren’t for the wind whistling all around, and the restless shuffling of their horse, it would be soundless, too.

Here, there are no leaves to sway in the wind; the branches bare and the evergreens lingering in scent alone, and the blanket of white below lies sleek and pristine as it spans to the edge of what was once a sizeable spring, as if nothing has disturbed it since winter’s coming.

It’s a spring no longer though, the cold weather having long since turned it to glass, and while the waterfall that once fed it is frozen solid and silent where it cascades over the cliff’s edge, Khobi can hear so clearly what it might sound like in summer; when time resumes, and the mountains are full of sound once more.

​And while they’re far from the snow capped peaks that even after all this time spent away Khobi still calls home, there’s something inherently familiar about the snowy, rolling landscape stretching out before him towards a spring’s edge --about the way the dark fingers of the forest curve on with the contour of the land until it merges with the horizon, and the mountains rising up beyond.

They’re not his mountains, no, those lie a world away from here, but where once they had been but shadows, here they have a new substance to them, and if he squints against the glare of the open sky, he can just make out the crags and rocky shapes of the mountainside.

​And with the frigid winter air rushing into his lungs and whipping through his hair, suddenly his mountains don’t feel quite so far away.

​A thump rises in his throat; so thick it almost hurts.

​"Yeah," Khobi croaks helplessly, eyes stinging in the cold wind, "S’nice."

​"...You wanna go down?" Loac inquires casually, and doesn’t seem to need to see Khobi nod to already know the answer.

In fact, in such a hurry as he is, Khobi only manages to get halfway out of the saddle before falling the rest of the way, landing flat on his back in the snow with a heavy oof .

To his immense irritation, Loac lands lightly on his feet directly next to him only a moment later. The snow barely even crunches.

​" Smooth ," he snickers, deliberately looming overhead. Khobi promptly gives his ankle a whack and glares up at him.

​"Asshole," Khobi states without heat, raising an arm to demand a hand up even though it probably would’ve been just as easy to do it himself.

For whatever reason Loac doesn’t bother pretending to think about it like he usually does, and reaches out to haul him to his feet.

For all Khobi’s considerable weight, he moves him like he’s weightless, and when Khobi staggers in close, the way flecks of light illuminate behind Loac’s eyes almost reel him right back off balance.

Come to think of it, Loac’s no small man either, and the horse handled the pair of them as easy as if he was riderless.

Which he currently is, and as such has immediately started to wander off. "Uh, don’t you need to tie him up or something?" he points out as he dusts himself off, because it seriously just looks like the stallion is going to up and leave them if they’re not careful.

​"Eh, he spends enough time cooped up," Loac shrugs dismissively, waving for Khobi to follow him as he ambles down the bank, "He gets bored." Khobi gets the feeling that he can relate. "...Don’t worry, he’ll come back. He knows the way."

​(Once upon a time, Khobi would have found that a very weird thing to say about a horse, and it probably says a lot about how much time he’s spent around Montrel that he now doesn’t.)

​Letting out a low breath he takes his first step, then sighs nostalgically as his boot hits the thick sheet of snow and descends , sinking down to the rugged earth and leaving a perfect imprint of his foot.

​And he knows that Loac’s already gone on ahead, but for a minute there he just closes his eyes and breathes .

​It’s the same wind out here that blows through the castle towers, he knows that, but somehow it tastes different .

The air rolling off the plains in Crade had been a welcome relief after the bitter, damp kind of foul that plagued Briyagi, but even on a clear day there’s something stuffy about city air, and despite how badly it stings his lungs when he breathes deep, there’s nothing quite like the cold breath of the wild; still fresh from recent snowfall and rich with the deep, earthy scent of the forest.

​"You comin’ or what?" Loac hollers from halfway down the slope, rudely ruining the moment. Or maybe just changing it, because when Khobi’s eyes snap open to find Loac amid that same snowy landscape, cloak twitching in the wind as he casts his gaze back at him, it’s hard to argue that that isn’t a sight in itself.

​"Yeah, yeah, give me a sec’," Khobi snorts back, and while he’d meant to sound annoyed , it instead comes out breathless.

​"Watch your step~" he teases as he turns away, unnecessary in that Khobi grew up on snow . It wasn’t the snow that was the problem, it was the dismount .

But more than irritated, Khobi finds himself almost fascinated by the languid sway of his shoulders and the slow rise and fall of his cloak as he shifts, breathing just out of time with the wind as if Loac has a current all of his own.

​(But he already knew that.)

Grinning, Khobi leaps off the bank with a shout, kicking up flurries of powder in his wake and showering Loac in white.

​"Wha -- Khobi !" Loac squawks, voice pitching into a whine as Khobi blows on by; eagerly bounding for the water’s edge to get a closer look at the spring, at the cliff, at everything .

From down here the rocky cliff face stretches up so high into the sky that Khobi has to crane his neck to see the top, and up close the waterfall frozen to it is huge .

And despite being restrained in ice, even more foreboding, and even though Khobi knows that it’s frozen solid, it feels like it could burst free at any moment.

It’s both terrifying and exhilarating, and in the back of his mind he kind of wants it to; just to see what would happen.