Chapter Twenty-One: In the Storm

 

It took them almost a month to finish their journey up to Mardoo, which was the nearest big city that could take them across the ocean. Winter chased them all the way there, but finally the wall of night receded and the snows stopped. They entered a gleaming desert that reached scorching temperatures during the day and dropped to freezing in the night.

Angloreae complained constantly, of course. Kyosti, too, hated living so much under the scorching Eye of Rokolo, and he covered his head. John, who hailed from this part of the world, and Sanji, who was used to much worse heat, became almost cheerful.

“This is as the world should be,” Sanji said one day, her hand clutched around Kyosti’s as she dragged his overheated and protesting body over the sand. “Hot and bright.” John made a noise of agreement. Anglorae snarled.

Their only reprieve was the sea, which was constantly on their left as they traveled north. At the hottest parts of the day, they either threw themselves into the roaring waves or sheltered under rocks and blankets.

Once, a storm caught them almost totally unawares. Kyosti had heard that the weather in the northern shores was unpredictable, especially in winter. Something about the hot air streaming across the empty ocean meeting the cold air coming across the land made for truly incredible storms that weren’t seen where he lived in Chithoobra. A frigid wind came screaming north toward them, and they barely had time to reach shelter because a frenzy of rain, hail, and snow whipped around them. If they had been in the open, they would have been ripped from the earth and flung into the waves, which reached truly monstrous heights, even close to the shore. They couldn’t hear each other over the wind, even Kyosti, who had been trying to train his hearing in the absence of his sight.

At one point in the storm, Sanji, John, and Anglorae became agitated over something. Kyosti, who could neither see what was happening nor hear their words, could only assume some of their supplies had been lost. In his mind, he began formulating a plan to get more food and fresh water. Sorn Iorn may had been a desert blasted by the gaze of the Great Traitor himself, but it still had things to eat.

It was only a few days later, when the storm finally passed over and their hearing had stopped ringing, that he finally got the full story.

“You totally missed it!” Anglorae told him, shaking his arm. “I never thought I would see one!”

“What an awe-inspiring sight,” Sanji sighed, leaning on his other side. “If only---”

“Sorry, what did you see?” Kyosti asked. The three crowded in close.

“We saw a HitherBlissery!”

He gaped. “You saw….what??”

Anglorae smacked his arm. “Surely even you know what that is!”

“But...so close to land? I thought you could only see them far out to sea.”

“It was far out to sea,” Sanji clarified. “You cannot imagine how huge it was. Even in the north, they’re a rare sight, but the storm must have drawn it out. We didn’t see the head, but its tail was straight out of the water, disappearing into the clouds! It was drawing all the lightning into it!”

Kyosti had heard of this, of course. HitherBlisseries usually lived in the darkest abyss of the oceans, so huge even their massive eyes were bigger than whole cities. Rarely did humans encounter them, and even more rarely did they harm humans. They didn’t even appear to eat other creatures. Instead, they only came to the surface during the biggest storms, their heads sinking far into the ocean and only their tail visible. They seemed to like being struck by lightning, their white scales glowing in the constant strikes.

“I’m sorry I missed it,” Kyosti muttered, the other three still oohing and ahhing over what they had seen.

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