Aerluinil often spoke of a white bird with long wings that flew high above ships upon the Sea. Such birds should never be harmed, but were revered and sometimes even followed, taken as omens of good fortune.
Ryheric was often superstitious. He believed in symbols and signs. He didn't hesitate if he could help it. Immediacy and what felt right were his driving forces. He saw colours, like auras surrounding people or objects they had touched. Colours for different intentions, colours for different states of mind. Colours for individuals, themselves. Each shade and hue a name in and of itself.
Blue was Ryheric's albatross, at times. The colour seen when it was most needed to show the right path. Sometimes it was found in actions, sometimes it belonged to a person.
It was not a colour that could take anything for itself. It was a colour that found its life in staying empty. Not the emptiness lacking fulfillment. But the emptiness like its own clean purity. It never needed to consume. Nor did it waver or self-destruct. Even paled, even muted, even darkened. Its existence was wholesome, and it was about giving. A colour for those who devoted themselves completely outwards.
.....
Take the knife and cut out his throat.
Everything was suddenly so confused. Red infringed the edges of his vision. Red, that so familiar colour. The colour for hunger and perpetual starvation. The colour that devoured until everything was gone, and then starved to the bitter end.
Take the knife off him.
An abrupt grab came and Ryheric's hand would have grasped that accursed blade, and he, or it, might have killed he and his friend.
Instead there was a warm hand, gripping at his wrist. Bryn's eyes set upon him. Words were whispered. There was power to them above and beyond any politics or egos.
Bryn was the brightest, burning shade of sapphire blue Ryheric had ever seen in his life. Like a flash. The usual muted grey gone from him. A sheet being ripped away.
Ryheric heard the words. They were important. But recalling them was impossible. So close had he come to being consumed and taking Bryn down with him.
The only thing that mattered was that space. Action. The bright, burning blue that seared through everything else. This boy's colour. Bryn the giver.
"Don't give in. I'm sorry too. I'm with you. We will face this together. Don't give in to it Ry."
.....
That same voice came again. Ry, usually first in to the battle, had faltered. Was he dead? He tried to recall who had killed him, and why he could not move his feet...
"Ry! We need you!"
Fire. Bryn wielded a torch of bright orange flames. The imagery even in that moment was not lost on him. Orange standing between blue and abyssal darkness. Just like the gradient of a fire.
He still couldn't move. Bryn stood there with the torch of flames, imploring Ry to bring that curved blade. Imploring him to rain red death.
But he couldn't move.
Fire. Orange flames swept this way and that across his vision. The threat echoed through his head.
"Come to Harloeg. Come alone, or they will all burn."
.....
He woke in the typical adrenaline rush, cold sweat. The storm had stopped. Wydnafrend the white horse and Son of Mouse the black colt grazed near, and Emmie had finally arrived.
