Chapter Text
There is something unsettled in the wind always. The wind doesn’t stop, doesn’t breathe, does not break. The wind is a moving force and it stops for no one. Not even Neil.
But sometimes the wind will wait. It doesn’t settle, exactly, but it slows, to a gentle current, just for a little while, more river than ocean. Neil listens for those short sighs of reprieve. He never asks for them. But they always happen when there is something for him to be done.
Most of the times there is a child. Not right here, never right here - but close. And they call to him, always. The distressed and the trapped, little souls like fireflies in the wind.
Neil saw fireflies once, real ones. He had been hiding behind a tree and the slow-falling night had arrived unnoticed. One moment he had his head tucked between his knees, a tiny child cloaked in darkness, and the next a little light was flickering beyond his closed eyelids. He had opened his eyes to see that the stars were falling down. One by one they had filled the space between the trees and they’d floated, like fairy lights, all around him. Neil remembers that the air had felt light and electric, each breath a surge of something filling his lungs. He had felt so… airy, all of a sudden, and had been sure, so sure that if he tried, he, like all the lights, would fly and shine like he used to in his dreams. But this was not a dream, and when Mary had come back Neil hadn’t so much as moved a toe.
It’s different now. Mary is gone and so is he, one of them taken by fire and the other through ice. Neil flies with the wind that stops for fireflies, and though his mother’s voice used to fly alongside him it doesn’t anymore. She has gone a second time. All Neil feels about this is relief.
Relief, like hope, is dangerous.
It hides things.
Covers them with a blanket of light so bright you would never think of trying to look beyond.
Not until you’re forced to.
Neil has been flying uninterrupted over Sweden for a day when it happens. The wind slows down, and at first Neil listens for the call. The song of helplessness and pain, blinking in the darkness, beaconing him closer. But there is nothing.
Neil waits for the wind to pick him up again. It does not.
There is something for you here, it whispers.
Neil floats down, freezing the layer of fresh snow he lands on. This is -
There is something calling him here, but it is not a song. Not a light. It’s -
It’s a creek, the Baltic sea dozing off beyond a wall of pines, and there is a bed of pebbles leading to the water beneath the snow. Thorn bushes and wild berries lie dormant by the trees, moss blanketing the ground at their feet. Everything here is green in the spring and alive. The sea laps at the bed of pebbles, rolling them over in its waves, ever peaceful. Neil knows this -
The sea is frozen now. There is no movement by the creek. Imprints of animals speckle the snow, telling stories of life in the stillness. There is no one here but -
Neil walks to the shore. His feet do not break the snow, yet still the cold creeps up. Neil’s blood is already frozen but his heart still stops. His bones rattle and crack like porcelain beneath his skin, which feels like glass. If Neil looked down, he's sure that he'd be able to see the veins and muscles of his right hand clutched around his staff, pulsing blue light into the wood.
Neil stops where the snow-covered ground leaves place to snow-covered ice. There is barely any movement in the water trapped by the cold but it is liquid still. Neil steps upon the sea and plants his staff into the ice.
Everything freezes.
There - rusted, frozen, encased - is metal. The car -
The car is empty. The seats are burned.
The ice around it tastes like blood and burning flesh.
Neil finds no trace of ash in the sea. He releases the water.
The wind hauls him to Iceland.
Neil floats, carried. The wind cradles him into the sky like a fragile little thing. He is bringing the snow still, but he does not care where. Clouds, white and all-encompassing, are all the matter that he sees. There is nothing else but blue.
Blue, like the flesh under his skin. Blue like the flowers in the spring. Blue, like his father’s eyes.
Blue like the hottest part of the flame that had devoured his mother and left nothing but steel.
Neil doesn’t understand the hollow in his chest. He thinks he might have punched it, or the wind, as he was standing there above the car. He thinks something might have reached through his flesh, through his breakable-as-glass bones, and torn a chunk of pain and blood. He thinks his father got him, in the end, deeper than the ice could reach.
Neil is alone. Has been alone. For a really, really long time.
Is he hollow for his mother, or himself? His father? His childhood, broken and bloody and splintered?
The shape of the hollow is odd. It moves and expands, shifts through his body like a plant. A growing wound.
Its edges are torn, frozen, and cold. And the wind cradles him. But it’s the thoughts that hurt, not the movements, and for the first time in his life, Neil is too shell-shocked to stop thinking.
So he floats. And he hurts. And the wind cradles him.
Neil notices when the wind starts to bring him down, but it’s a near thing. He is surprised, distantly, that he still weighs anything at all. The hollow has eaten him alive, cell by cell, leaving nothing alone but his skin. He is a shell of ice, paper-thin and breakable. He hasn’t moved in days.
The wind lowers him to the ground slowly. He lands on a blanket of snow, and tries to sleep. Slumber will not take him, but he can’t move, so here he stays. His eyelids have eroded enough that they’re see-through. He watches the birds fly, the pine trees wave. The sky above is so blue that it burns.
Everything is white and blue.
The world.
Time.
Neil.
A snowflake
falls
on the ground
and
Neil
watches
.
You need to get up.
There are no flowers here.
You need to get up!
Not anymore.
Listen to me!
There will be flowers later. When Neil will be long gone.
You need to get up! Do you hear me?
He will never see flowers again.
Abram!
Even if he did, there would be no tomb to put them on.
ABRAM!
She is gone.
And there is no trace left of her.
Get up.
Not even ash.
Get up.
Nothing.
Please.
You have got to get up.
It isn’t the voice that wakes him up.
It’s the warmth. Slow and deliberate.
He is still there, after all. He was so sure he wouldn’t be.
The warmth moves. It feels wet. It breathes. Whines.
Neil opens his eyes.
The fox has orange eyes like amber stones. It sits with its front paws tucked close and its tail warped around its body. Its fur is white white white like the world, but its muzzle is black and the eyes are amber stones pierced with cave-like pupils. The fox tilts its triangular head, rustles its ears. The sun kisses its fur, which does not melt. Life is already warm.
Everything else is cold, most of all Neil. But the warmth calls to him.
He raises a hand. Slow and careful. Open palm. Just like with King. The fox looks at the hand and tenses. Its ears stiffen, alarmed.
Neil stills.
The fox listens.
Neil lowers his hand back to the ground. His eyes have fluttered nearly shut again when warmth suddenly surges back to him.
The fox has sniffed his hand. Its posture has relaxed. Neil keeps still, and the fox licks his hand, once. Twice. Neil huffs out a small breath.
The fox’s ears perk up again, but this time the fox steps close. It breathes against Neil’s face, and licks Neil’s cheek, once, twice, this time up to the corner of Neil’s eye. Something cold falls off; a crystal. Drops of ice pepper Neil’s exposed skin like the freckles he used to have during summer. The fox chases them off of him with diligence, making Neil huff again.
Every swipe of its tongue, every inch of contact with its soft, soft fur, sends ripples of warmth through Neil’s skin. When the fox starts licking at his hair, Neil sits up and laughs. It startles the fox a little, so Neil coaxes it closer with his hand again. It doesn’t take as long this time, and soon enough Neil has his arms full of fur. The fox props itself up with its front paws against Neil’s chest, and opens its mouth up wide, displaying sharp teeth. Neil almost jumps back, but the fox doesn’t seem interested in biting. It stays in that position for a beat longer instead, eyes closed and tail curled horizontally, with its ears to the sides. It does bite then, but only the air, and then the fox jumps back.
It comes back almost immediately, pouncing and landing next to Neil’s side with its mouth open. It puts its mouth around Neil’s arm without biting then jumps back, ears still pushed to the sides. When it comes back again, Neil tries grabbing at it, and ends up toppling backwards into the snow as the fox twists and scratches lightly, mouth agape. Neil pushes the fox off of him and watches it roll away only to come bouncing back the moment it’s back on its feet. Neil laughs this time as they grapple, and the fox yaps like it’s trying to copy the sound, somehow. They roll apart in the snow then chase each other around the small clearing, flailing and thrashing about with abandon. By the time they’re done Neil’s pretty sure he’s got snow shoved in all of his clothes, yet he feels warm. Really warm. The kind of warmth that lasts.
They’re both panting heavily, though Neil significantly more than the fox, and are lying on the ground, with the fox’s flank pressed to Neil’s side. Eventually the fox lowers its head on its front paws and its tail upon Neil’s leg. The world is a clearing.
They stay like that for a while.
By the time the fox starts to stir, nightfall has come and gone and the sky is no longer burning. Neil sits up slowly. The fox steps forward and sniffs at him, its snout wet against Neil’s skin. Neil brings a hand up to the fox’s fur and strokes, just a few times. And then it’s done.
The fox steps back, turns, and walks out of the clearing.
As soon as it disappears, the wind picks up.
Neil flies off with a smile and a ribcage full of warmth.
“I made a friend,” he tells Andrew the night he’s come back.
“Congratulations. I’m not adopting another cat.”
“It was a fox,” Neil says, and grins when Andrew’s façade crumbles slightly with surprise. He’s been chasing those moments with increasing success, lately.
Andrew looks away with a light scoff at his grin. “I bet it was an arctic one, too.”
Neil hums, smiling still. “White as a cloud.”
“Such a cliché.”
“You’re the one who turned me into a book character.”
“Shut up,” Andrew grumbles, and ignores the way Neil laughs into the kiss.