[Ileyna] One Gulp
“One gulp. One gulp is all it takes to kill a man.”
Nails torn and uneven dug into the water rotted board as his voice sounded that warning over and over in her mind.
That invitation.
Flickers of light played off what remained of the shipwreck; beneath the ocean’s surface there was little illumination but she made do with filtered through to the depths. Northrend was not a kind place and the waters here just as frigid as Icecrown in her mind. Yet Ileyna did not swim as a sea lion, did not use the gifts granted to a druid. A swim bladder hung on a cord over her shoulder and when needed, she took little puffs of air from the tool the tuskarr fellow had made her.
A trade. She had given him something in kind. Something precious. Her heart fluttered and the scratches on her arm stung in the salt water despite the sodden leather armor that hid them.
Branches shook as the little treant struggled. Twig was all she had left! Twig was all she had! The rabbits were given to a neighbor! The whelp to another druid! Twig was all she had! The treant couldn’t speak but its little mouth edged in jagged wooden lines - teeth - gnashed. Groans left it. Pitiful sounds that made the ice around her heart crack. They were the sounds of a tree in winter. It bent beneath the weight of snow and its bark shuddered in complaint.
Gloved hands held Twig firmly. The tuskarr nodded at her and she turned. Silver eyes were dull. Where once she possessed a glow to rival starlight, now they were flat and grey. They were dry. There were no more tears left in her to cry. Three raised lines of blood were bright against the pale pink skin of her arm. Her pet had not parted peacefully from her.
Long gone was her reason and concern for herself but she still had sense enough left to realize that beneath the waves was no place for Twig. Wood swelled with the water. It bloated.
Like the flesh of the dead trapped here.
Bodies surrounded her. Fish had picked at the skin and the eyes and the organs of the swollen and distended corpses. Bones reached out from hollowed chests. White ‘fingers’ of ribs reached for her as she floated past. They were stripped clean of flesh and pale as her hair that flowed freely around in the water; it spread and waved after her like pale seaweed as she roamed the wreck like a spirit chained to the boards.
When had the braids come undone?
One hand lazily reached behind her and felt for the willow branch and the charms. They were there.
Of course they are.
But where is it?
Had she just not bothered with that morning ritual one day? There was nothing routine to her life now. Days drifted by in a haze, barely aware of herself much less what chores fell to the wayside. When had she stopped caring? When had she become a shell and stopped being a person?
She didn’t know anymore.
A sharp mind full of concern for the world had narrowed to the drug addled, sliver of hope given to her by a man- her husband? -that sent her here. He had wanted her to see something. He had wanted her to know of his death. To understand it so she could understand him.
Was that his intent? She no longer knew what were dreams brought on by the herbs and the drugs and what was truth. But she was here now and she was chilled to the bone as she explored the wreck of the ship he had manned. For him, at his request, she had come.
The bladder came to her lips and she took a deep breath. Bubbles tickled her cheeks and rippled over the intricate tattoos. It might have made her smile but the biting cold of the water and the loss of sensation from the things she smoked and drank and snorted locked away joy and smothered laughter.
Something caught her eye and she kicked past the corpse she had been staring at.
How long have you been down here?
Not long enough. I haven’t found it.
This new ripple in the water wasn’t the mysterious it either. What had looked blue at a distance was grey; long strands of grey hair that danced in the water and curled around her fingers for a moment. Her foot brushed the skull it was attached to and she only stared back for a heartbeat. A scream might have tore from the wreckage of her throat once at the way the head of the man squished under her toes. Now she paddled on, uncaring.
I am so cold. I should get out of the water. The tuskarr village is not far away.
I haven’t found it yet.
What had he sent her here for? He had been so vague. But her husband had been nothing but that since he returned. Nothing but whispers and reminders. They said it wasn’t Ansrim. They were wrong. A wife knew. She knew. What was left to her if not him?
My work. The Circle. My pets. My friends.
I am nothing without my Ansrim.
Silver eyes wrenched shut and once, where their luminescent glow would have shone behind her lids, there was only darkened flesh from poor health and lack of sleep. Pink skin was discolored and blotchy. Blessedly, there were no mirrors here for her to see that. Ileyna looked more a sea hag than the kaldorei she was. Armor hung loosely on her shrunken body and her cheeks had sunken in. Her antler headdress was gone from her head, instead strapped to her belt as to not get caught on the ship.
It caught elsewhere; she did not notice the prong puncture the bottom of her air bladder. Her eyes opened again only to narrow at something so trivial compared to the problem at hand.
Small and oval, its once white surface covered in algae made her stop her strokes. A bone scarab. Her husband had fought in the War of the Shifting Sands and though it may seem a jab, to them it was a reminder. Their people would topple all adversaries.
We just need believe it. Isn’t that what you told him?
Quickly she swam over and snatched it up, such a small thing as to rest in the palm of her hand. The ankh was on the bottom! It was his.
This! He sent me for this! For the token I gave him on our wedding-
Her thoughts were cut short as the wood above her creaked. Whatever had sunk this ship had weakened her hull greatly and the months beneath the water had done nothing but rot away what remained. She hadn’t been careful. There had been no reason to be when she had died here in spirit with him.
Something akin to regret brewed in her chest as the plank crashed down. Never quick to begin with, now drug addled and her limbs heavy with the cold it slammed down atop her. Air she had held in her lungs rushed out and the bubbles were gone and into the hole this fallen support had created. She thrashed beneath it and kicked her long legs in a vain effort to free herself.
The movements helped something else come free; another piece of wood crashed down on top of the other and she screamed as it landed on her ribs. Beneath the water there was no sound from her lips and what little air she had left pushed free with the silent cry of pain. Bones snapped. A healer knew those sounds. She had been a healer before and she understood the way snapped bones pushed through flesh. How hard it would be to mend herself.
If she even could now with the state she had put herself in.
Hands trembled and she reached for the bladder of air. Nothing but a mouthful remained. The punctured bottom flapped and she stared in mute horror.
I am going to die here. I am going to die a failure.
Not much different than the rest of my life.
She winced and did not argue with herself. It was true. A failure of a teacher laid pinned here beneath the water swollen wood. A failure of a wife weakly tried to worm free and found no room to do so. A failure of a daughter stared upward at the hole made by these fallen boards. So distant was the surface. The sun was bright and the skies were full of gulls. A brisk sea breeze had kissed her cheeks the boat ride here.
It had smelled like him. She had felt closer to him on the deck of that ship than sitting across from the dead man at the dinner table.
Streams of blood floated from her chest and were warm when they passed her cheeks. More trickles of blood ran freely from where Twig had scratched her. It was so cold here.
Had he been so cold as he died?
Fingers tightened around the scarab and she closed her eyes to banish her surroundings. Lungs burned and begged for air. She relinquished the last breath of air the bladder had given her through her nose to try and quiet the demand. There was nothing left. She was too taxed to shift. What should have been injuries that could have been ignored in the interest of self preservation were death wounds. Her body was weakened from drug use and lack of sleep and food.
The pain in her chest blossomed and she shook her head.
“One gulp. One gulp is all it takes to kill a man.”
There were other things to live for, weren’t there? She still had her brother. Thaleideth would mourn her! Blackbird would miss her!
No. They had forgotten her. As she had her whole life, she slipped through the cracks of their minds and went unnoticed. Lost.
He was one find me. To keep me.
Ileyna pressed her lips together once as she felt a tear slip from beneath her lashes. It mixed with the seawater and was swallowed up by the ocean. It had swallowed him and soon, it seemed, it would take her too.
Today would be a very good day to die. This place would be a very good place to die.
Lips parted and water filled where air alone belonged.
Lyude sent Ileyna to Northrend to 'find something for him'. Really he just hoped she'd die and leave him be. He might be that lucky!