To think – he’d never seen the sea.
Standing here at the entrance to the rest of the world was unsettling. Shandom was not sure whether or not he quite liked it – it sent a strange shiver down his spine. Everything was quiet and serene, the only sound coming from the caws of birds and the soft wush of the water against the sand. It felt so different beneath his four paws – he’d elected to remain in his Lupus form for this particular adventure, and he felt much better this way – almost intangible, like he could, at any moment, fall away. The autumn sun was warm on his alabaster back, and Shandom enjoyed and appreciated it. The smells of winter were fast coming, and although he had no particular distaste for the cooler season, having been raised in an extremely chilly environment, he would be sad to see the vibrancy of fall depart.
He liked the serenity, and the silence. It reminded him of days that made sense to him, when he could wander alone and live with his own thoughts and memories. Since he was banished from Etienne, time had become almost liquid to him – he lost track of days, living by the change of daylight and seasons. Those he came across were equally independent, and their times together were brief. The longest he’d spent with a wolf outside of someone from Etienne was Keliyya and Yajaira, and even that was relatively short. Long enough for them to have a whirlwind romance, long enough for him to impregnate her and meet the children, and long enough for him to realize he couldn’t do it.
Shandom sighed, reclining onto his haunches and keeping his eyes trained on the ever shifting water. It was so beautiful, really, and utterly untamed. He thought it must be a nice way to be, beholden to nobody and ever moving, ever shifting. In its ripples, his face was indistinct and constantly changing – it did not reflect much besides the outline. And yet he could still see the incredibly defined scar, the jagged line that entirely ruined his face. The image was imbalanced, and Shandom knew it was because of his blindness; he remembered the days when everything was even.
Such balance did not exist for him now.
