Chapter Text
And so they were, Home. Wemmbu swore, this time, they would settle. Build something small, quieter, do something simpler and allow the world to grow around them. This time, he would follow Egg, wherever he desired; downriver, into fields of red and gold, to the very edges of the universe.
Death does not bring with it the pain and hellfire he so feared. His reckoning came not with the ring of bells and blazing inferno. Instead it came with the feather light breaths of spring.
Death brought with it warm winds, carrying the scent of sunflowers and river-water. Death brought with it light; fireflies that drifted lazily among reeds and riverbeds, at harmony with the eternal twilight skies. Death brought with it a flowing river; slow, winding and crystal clear waters that reflected the stars above. It carried all things yonder in its gentle embrace, toward that fading horizon.
“I missed this.” He would tell the body resting against his own, and feel the feathers reverberate as Egg hums his agreement.
Two bodies sat by the riverside, one in the other’s arms, curled perfectly in a mass of fur and feathers, close enough that there was no space for doubt and gazing into the vast expanse of infinity, where the sky knelt down to meet water.
“Do you think it ever ends?” Wemmbu asks, voice softer than the current.
Egg tilts his head just enough that his wings brush lightly against Wemmbu’s shoulder. “No,” he answers after a moment, “I think it just… changes shape.”
Wemmbu lets that sit between them, watching the way the light scatters across the surface, never quite the same twice. “Sounds exhausting.”
A quiet laugh. “You say that like you’re not part of it.”
“Maybe I’m not,” Wemmbu replies, though there is no bite to it. “Maybe I’ll just stay here instead.”
Egg glances at him then, something warm and knowing. It’s all Wemmbu had ever wanted. “You could,” he says. “For a while.”
“Not forever?”
“Nothing is forever.”
Winter will never come again, and whatever weight they had once felt has been wholly and forever set aside, slipped loose and sunk somewhere far beneath the surface. Nothing asks anything of them.
Somewhere far, far away, there lay a cold body on the snow, wind ripping through its armour and cloth. The world had been too full of names, spoken sharply with anger, hand carved by hatred.
But all that was quiet now. It was the end of the line, just as fate had always intended.
Snow gathers quietly on his shoulders, dimming the last traces of something that once burned too brightly.
Wemmbu casts his line.
The stars do not shift, and the river does not hurry. Once In a while, his line tugs playfully. He reels in things spun of stardust, constellations that returned, glimmering and weightless, to the sky above.
Cold as they were on the outside, here they were soft and warm. Held, and more importantly, together again. Without fear and without consequence. For now, and for the rest of time, that was enough.