if you're lost, then i'll find you Calhoun hovers... often. He is grateful, in some ways, for the haze that clouds Calypso in the days that follow; she drifts in and out of sleep, but mostly she rests. And he checks on her. Every time he ventures past her den — and he comes up with reasons to make it frequent — he pokes his head in, as though to make certain she is still there. Still there, and still breathing. He isn't certain if she notices any of his coming and goings, or if she is too clouded by her healing and herbs to retain any of the fleeting moments after he is gone. Sometimes he finds Grit curled up with her, and it makes him smile — and induces a pang for still-missing Camelia, and he holds his girls a little tighter at night. Calhoun is up well before the rise of the sun, luring in the hungry morning fish and getting lucky enough to snag a sizeable mulloway with the receding tide. Dawn breaks as he clambers out of the frigid waters, the fish between his jaws and his paws making for the den where Calypso rests. He is still drawn tight with the lines of stress and anxiety, but knowing that she is here — it eases, a balm to his soul. He ducks into the relative darkness of her den, setting the fish down a few feet in front of her still-sleeping frame. If it weren't for the wounds that litter nearly every inch of her, she would look peaceful, instead of ragged. There's a sort of bitter beauty in it — in how she had once found him much the same, and it had been her standing over his broken body. And he realizes, that with time, she has somehow healed his soul as well. "Caly," he murmurs, brushing his snout against the base of her ear, inhaling the scent of her that he's been deprived of for all these months. It strikes him — how much she smells like home, and how incomplete his world had been without her in it. Damn him for what a stubborn fool he's been. @Calypso

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There is a tension that exists in the druid that did not exist before, an uncertainty as she views the world without the haze. In the beginning of her time in the mist it had been easy to separate reality from apparition, but as the days passed the line blurred. Calypso existed in a constant state of questioning, and at times accepting things that could not be possible. Words that ate away at her very soul, feeding the insecurities she had carried with her all this time. Out of the mist she is a little bit like a boat set adrift at sea, searching for land to anchor herself to this reality. It comes in the shape of her daughter, for Grit has fast become her anchor. If she ever worries that the mist has returned to pull her away from her home she reaches out to touch her child, the one who had grown so much in the days where they could not touch. Breathing in her scent and feeling her warmth beneath her touch was a constant reminder that this was real. the mist is gone, and you are safe. Sometimes she repeats the words again and again in her mind, all while wearing a brave smile for those she loved. All while assuring them that she was okay, everything was okay, even when she knew it was not. The wounds on Calypso are not only physical, or on the surface, and the ones that she buries deep inside and the ones she worries most will not heal. They emerge, now, as she jerks awake under his touch, flashing her broken-toothed snarl and flinging herself up and away. Away, demon, away! Heart hammering in her chest, ready to fight, fight, fight. Realization comes swiftly, followed by a burning shame, and she averts her eyes and spills an apology in to the quiet of the den -- "I'm sorry." @Calhoun if you go blind then i'll describe the view

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if you're lost, then i'll find you He supposes he shouldn't have expected anything else than her aggression; hadn't he been the same, when he'd first awoken in that cave? Calypso's only true saving grace in that moment had been his inability to act on that rage. His muzzle jerks up and back, evading her initial lash out and giving her breathing space — room for recognition. Calhoun can't say that he would have cared if she had bitten him or clawed him; he is just grateful that she is here, that she is alive, even if it is a warped version of her. She is still Calypso, just as he had still been Calhoun somewhere beneath the surface. He leans quietly back onto his haunches, flicking his ears towards her and offering a little quirk of his lips. "Nothin' teh be sorry fer," he counters, taking no offense to her startle and shrugging it off as easily as the tide rolls in. Calhoun wants nothing more than to cling to her, to wrap her up in his embrace and never let go — but he spares her that stress, gives her space, unwilling to make her feel cornered. This version of Calypso is something feral, a wild animal he must handle with care. "Hungry?" he queries, trying to pull her from that dark place and back into reality, where they can pretend that things are more normal. Calhoun isn't quite certain he even knows what normal is anymore, but he knows that he will gladly search for it every day as long as Calypso is there.

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Calypso in her right mind would have seen the way this time mirrored another -- the way he was in the role she had been so long ago. She is not quite able to grasp the comparison, though, even as she flashes her teeth and claws and feels the fur rise along her back. Her mind is not clear, it is not hers, and even as the shame rises she does not see. There are a thousand things she wants to say to chase away the tension, a hundred different ways she thinks to start. Instead she chooses none of them, lapsing in to an uneasy silence in which she feels the guilt begin to weigh her down. He did not deserve this, not after everything she had put him through. Calypso is not blind, even when she is unwell, and knows that the months took their toll on him. Months... He offers an olive branch and she runs with it -- "aye, starved." Even if her stomach rolls as the thought of food, even if each recent bite had been a battle to swallow. Had she eaten in the mist? She must have, but she has no memory of it. No hunts that she can think of, no meat to warm her belly. Perhaps it was another trick of the mist -- perhaps it is why she is more frail and sunken than she has ever been. "Real?" she asks suddenly, grasping for a lifeline in the absence of her daughter, reaching almost fearfully to press a paw against his arm. if you go blind then i'll describe the view

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if you're lost, then i'll find you He cannot even begin to comprehend her experience in the mist; Calhoun has never been particularly religious in the true sense of the word. He has his superstitions, as most pirates do, but this experience has gone far past anything he is even remotely capable of comprehending. Where had she been, really? Had she looked for him, as often as he looked for her? Calhoun has so many questions, and none of them feel right — none of them feel like they are anything she can even answer. And so he bites his tongue, pushing the fish in her direction, and feeling even as though the weight of him staring might make her crumble. He looks anywhere else — at the ground, at his paws, at the shifting shadows on the back wall of the den whilst the sun is rising. Real? she breathes, fervent, her quivering paw pressing against his foreleg and drawing Calhoun's gaze up to find her unsteady one. His brows furrow, and he cannot quite help the swelling of sorrow; how many times have his dreams tormented him in the same way? "Aye," he murmurs, seeking to tip his crown to her cheek — slow enough so as not to startle, to allow her to recoil if she needs the space to breath, "real." Calhoun wants to promise that nothing will hurt her again, that the worst is over, but how can he, when he knows it might be a lie? He couldn't protect her from this, and he has no of knowing if it could happen again — and that thought truly terrifies him.

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Time would unlock the story she had, the experience she had lived through, piece by terrifying piece. Time would release a page at a time -- but not yet. Now it is tucked away, hidden, as she struggles to make sense of it all in the wake of her freedom. Why her? Why them? Grit -- oh her darling daughter! -- was so brave in the mist and she had felt such relief to know she was unharmed. All the fighting she had gone through was worth it in the end, to know that she had protected the one she was sworn to protect. Calypso would have done it for any of them, but for Grit... for Grit she would do it a thousand times. A part of her is aware of the fish, can smell the appeal of the fresh meat on the den floor. But another part of her is scrambling for her anchor, feeling much like the rope has slipped out of her hands and the iron is sinking to the depths. But then Calhoun is there, steady beneath her touch, and she is able to draw a shuddering breath. "Good," she murmurs, "d'at is good." Real. For a second she presses her cheek to his, but then dives, skittish, uncertain, under the guise of snagging the fish from the ground. Her stomach rolls but she tears in to it, holding it steady with one paw, swallowing down chunks of the creature as if it were the best thing she had ever tasted. As if it were not just a distraction, a shield for her haywire emotions, a place to put her feelings and not be judge for them. Rip and tear and try to forget the sludge that had come from their torn flesh. if you go blind then i'll describe the view

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if you're lost, then i'll find you For a moment, he has a glimpse — a single second in which she is wholly Calypso, when her voice is soft and her cheek is warm against his fur. In the next breath, she is gone again, wrenching away from him as she dives to the den floor, digging into the fish with a tenacity that feels forced. Calhoun knows knows a distraction well enough when he sees one, and he takes a somewhat hesitant step backwards, giving her that room to breathe. He doesn't know what to do with this version of her, this feral and wild thing who often seems to look through him rather than at him. She seems... fragile, a glass canon, and he doesn't know what might make her combust. His muzzle swings a little warily towards the doorway, and then back towards her, his brows furrowed, muzzle quivering. "Do ye want me teh go? Or—?" He hesitates, perched on the cusp of coming or going, and gives her the power to choose, "—stay?" Calhoun will not run any longer, but he also would not fault Calypso for needing to. Just now, he is whatever she needs him to be, no questions asked.

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like the sea touches the soil he backed off and she wanted to beg him to come back. to not leave her -- to never leave her -- and gone is the fiercely independent druid he knew so well. gone in the mist, taken with the apparitions that had stolen so much of her. not only her toes and her tooth for those are insignificant things, but the parts of her soul that they had buried so deep, leaving her without a map to find them. he asks, then, and she swallows hard the piece of fish and shakes her head, almost frantic. "don't --" ocean-storm eyes did not properly look at him, only fleeting glances and fear. maybe it was the den, the enclosed space, because she was torn a thousand ways. she needed him here -- she did not want him to go -- but she felt almost desperate for the open sky and air. maybe she should sleep outside, nevermind the chill in the air. the mist had trapped her for so long... "don't go," she repeats and now her voice is calmer, and there is the ghost of a smile on her lips, "please." bit by bit, she would dig up all the pieces and put herself back together.

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if you're lost, then i'll find you She anchors him with one look, one word. He hates that wild, fearful look in her eyes — he hates that he couldn't stop it, that he couldn't protect her. Had he looked so feral, so haunted when he'd first woken up in that cave? Calhoun knows that he stays because of his feelings for her, but none of that had existed when Calypso had pulled him from the wreckage; she has always been better than him, more selfless, more noble. Calhoun deserves the demons he'd brought upon himself, but Calypso — Calypso does not deserve hers. "Alrigh', I won't," he promises, echoing her soft smile with something that's intended to be reassuring, but concern still stitches his brows together. He doesn't settle, and in the quiet he is acutely aware of the smell of iron mixed in with the ocean spray. That smell had driven him mad, trapped inside that cave — yearning for an ocean he could hear but couldn't see, couldn't touch. His head tilts slightly, suspecting that she might feel much the same way. "Would ye like teh go to teh water?" he ventures, grasping for something familiar — something grounding for her to cling to. She can walk — albeit slowly — and he is a firm believer that sunshine and saltwater are good for the kinds of wounds that herbs can't heal.

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he promises not to leave and she relaxes, settling back down to eat the meal he has brought her, determined to finish it all no matter how her stomach rolled. months without a meal -- but that was impossible, wasn't it? surely she had eaten... surely she had hunted. so then why could she not remember it? why was there only the mist and the fog and the fighting? and blood -- always so much blood. his offer brings her head up, swallowing some of the last bits of fish, and her gaze is sharp and focused and hopeful. "Aye," she said, quickly, "aye i would." Was this the torture she had settled on Saga's shoulders, then? this aching emptiness as she had commanded her rest? away from the ocean, the sea, her very life force? ah but the lagoon leader had been far more gravely injured -- calypso might be missing some toes but she was not broken. "please," a hushed plea as she stands slowly, her entire body aching and sore, the healer in her yelling to lie down and recover. meanwhile, the ocean sang to her, and she could not resist its call. @Calhoun if you go blind then i'll describe the view

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