if you're lost, then i'll find you The faint hint of a smile ghosts along his lips, seeing the way her eyes light up at the suggestion. Just as his had when he'd gotten his first taste of freedom. There are still glimpses of her — lingering beneath a warped surface, but still every bit the woman he's searched for all these months. He makes space, emerging into the rising sunlight and waiting for Calypso to follow suit; if she seeks his shoulder to lean upon, he offers it — but he never makes a move to encroach on any space she doesn't willingly offer. The waves, at least, aren't far. Many of the dens rest somewhere near the shoreline, and it's a short stretch to heed the ocean's call. Where the seafoam kisses the shore, he leans onto his haunches — a sentinel, stalwart and constant. His muzzle tips down, a sidelong glance following Calypso. There are so many things he wants to ask, so many things he wants to know. He isn't certain if even she has the answers, hidden somewhere beneath the feral creature that's been dumped unceremoniously back upon his doorstep. There are no words, really, that can heal this rift; there is nothing that can give them back missed time. Calhoun, as he often does, finds himself at a loss to say anything. Instead, he gauges Calypso quietly, allowing her to steer whatever conversation she wants — or lack of one. He is just as content to let the waves be their melody for now, as long as he knows that she is here. Real, right in front of him. Alive and breathing. Home.

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there is determination as she rises. determination as she limps, heavily, towards the mouth of the den. determination as she fights the aching protest of her body, ignoring the pull of her muscles as she steps forward. the scent of the sea is enough to wipe the pain from her mind, the sound of it a siren's call upon the shore. halfway there she does end up leaning against him, ignoring the mingled emotions she felt at the touch. fight, tear, slash at war in her mind with the reminder that this was captain, safety, home. calypso visibly relaxes as her toes touch the surf, even as the salt water stings and stirs a hiss from her lips. she swallows it down, beats it back -- this pain was nothing in comparison to the last weeks -- and settles beside him. between them there is space and she frowns, wanting both to close it and increase it. she can feel his gaze on her and keeps hers on the horizon, feeling the sudden well of tears in her eyes and blinking them back. dammit. "real?" because she wants, suddenly, to meet him with tooth and claw. because he must be another creation of the mist, right? another test that she must past, another trial she must endure. her claws clutch at the sand, again, and she hates the way her heart races in her chest, spurred on by a mix of fear and relief that makes no sense and yet is her constant state. her eyes track down to the water, to the sea on her fur and the sand beneath. an anchor, a reminder that this was real; the mist had denied her of this very thing for so long. and so... ocean-storm eyes rise to those of the sunrise and there is the tiniest glimmer of her beneath the ruin. if you go blind then i'll describe the view

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if you're lost, then i'll find you Calhoun finds a strange sense of irony in the way they are now. How they dance around each other like the matching poles of magnets, reaching and repelling all in the same breath. When he is able to find honesty in himself, she is...damaged. Damaged in ways he doesn't know how to fix, and it feels acutely wrong to put the burden of his emotions on her right now, and he is again internalizing — for Calypso's sake. It's always for her. Real? she asks again, and he is just as steady as the first time — "aye. Real." She's like a man who's been marooned, trapped with nothing but her own thoughts for company, a nightmare of her own design. Calhoun knows those demons only too well, and he cannot wrestle hers away any more effectively than he could his own. In a sense, he knows that they are just as real to her as he is; the waking nightmares are the most torrential ones — the most devastating. "I saw it," Calhoun murmurs, deciding that instead of asking for answers, he will offer his own truths — his reality. "I saw it— take you. An' Grit." If he had gotten there soon enough, could he have stopped it? Or would it have taken him too, and left the crew floundering, with no one to turn to? Not that Calhoun had been the most present of captains throughout it all, but he had still been here, for whatever it was worth. He sighs, low and heavy, breathing out with the sea. "I'm sorry I couldn't—" His words catch in his throat, and it feels raw as though he has been screaming. Maybe he has been, when he sleeps. He takes a breath, walling back the waves of emotion — "protect ye." Save you. Love you. Calhoun is sorry for all of it, every wasted moment, every second he had taken for granted. And he fears, now, that it's all slipped irreparably out of his grasp.

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there is relief in the wake of his confirmation, again. relief that slumps her shoulders and has her feeling like she might sink to the sand and let the ocean soak her. chill her to the bone and remind her that this is real and she is alive and nothing else matters. real he confirms, and for a moment everything is okay. for a moment until "i saw it." it is the first solid confirmation that she was not mad, that somebody besides grit believed her. the first inclination that it was not all in her head, that it had been... real. the cracks start small as her reality fractures, building as he speaks, utters apologies that she cannot comprehend or know what to do with. a small -- "don't" -- amidst the storm that she weathers, a twitch of her paw on the sand as if she might press it to his lips. her breathing is labored, though, and her heart races as quickly as it had in the prior days when she was pulled from nightmares to a herb-scented den. a shake of her head, once, twice, and she is scrambling to hold on to this reality and forget the other one she had lived. how could it be real? "I didn't eat. I didn't hunt. I only fought, an' bled, an'.... an' i healed again an' again. every day started de same, whole an' well, an' d'ey would come an' fight an' when d'ey left i would heal." an endless loop, a living hell, and the details were not there and she was vague but it was something. if you go blind then i'll describe the view

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if you're lost, then i'll find you He doesn't know if it's better or not — to validate what's happened to her, whatever that is, or if he should pretend it hadn't happened. It's different than what happened to him, an event that is quantifiable in plain sight to anyone with eyes enough to look. But Calypso... here is where they differ, where he can't compare to this strange and unnatural thing that's happened and left her ravaged. But he does — believe her. How can he not, after all he's seen? It may be too absurd for anyone who hadn't seen it with their own two eyes, and Calhoun can only guess at what happened on the inside; but from the outside looking in, he has no doubt that Calypso's experience is real. Tangible. Earth-shattering. His ears tip back towards his skull, wrought by the description she gives him, the endless living hell she's suffered. How is he meant to protect her from that? Calhoun would have done anything to take her place, or to be there with her — the shield against the darkness. He would gladly have given up a hundred lifetimes if it meant preventing her this inexplicable, irreversible pain. He wants to shelter her, but how can he, when the storm is within her? Calhoun sighs softly, tipping his chin down towards the sand, and seeks to lean his shoulder against Calypso's — something tangible, a reminder that this world is real, and in this world, he will be her anchor when she is adrift — always. Just as she has been for him.

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he doesn't say anything, and she doesn't know if that's better or worse. his silence is accepting but she is not sure of that, looking at him, trying to discern just how he felt. did he believe her? she didn't see disbelief, but then, how could he? how could anybody believe it when she could barely believe it herself? if not for the wounds that covered her body, if not for the missing toes and broken tooth... "it doesn't make sense," she admitted, with a frown, her voice thickened with her accent in the height of emotion. "it was impossible, but it happened. it must have, aye?" a gesture at the wounds in question, an indication that she was not entirely crazy, she couldn't be. calypso might not remember hunting or eating, but she must have. just as she must have imagined her wounds healing -- else why would they seem as fresh as the day they were made when she emerged? but if that was imagined then what else? what else was real or not real? a furrowed brow, a frown of confusion. "i jest.. i dont understand it. what did i do?" why me? if you go blind then i'll describe the view

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if you're lost, then i'll find you Calhoun wants to comfort her — to assure her that whatever has happened, she'll be safe now. That she's not crazy. That this was all real. But the words catch in his throat, and nothing seems like the right thing to say. He has spent all these months wanting nothing more than for Calypso to be back, to say all the things he'd left unsaid, but she is not... her, just now. She is only splintered parts of a whole, and he can see all the shattered pieces of her just as clearly as can see who she is supposed to be. He is somber and hesitating, tiptoeing around a Calypso he doesn't know what to do with. Cautious is not often the apt word to describe Calhoun Galloway, but it is in this moment. "Ye didn't do anythin," he says after a long moment, his brows furrowed. It is not disbelief that plagues him, not distrust of her story as it is; rather, he struggles with organizing his own thoughts on the matter. Every moment she'd been gone had been turbulent, every bit as chaotic as whatever had gone on on the other side of that wall. "There were...a lot o' others taken." How many, he isn't quite certain how to quantify, but he knows that whatever has happened here happened across the whole of the island. "It was real, Caly. Just as this is real. I cen't tell ye how, or why. But it was real." It was real, and detrimental, and world-shattering — and if he hadn't seen it with his own two eyes, Calhoun would not have believed one word of it. "It— it was like a game. Teasin' us wit' strange creatures an' noises. I don' think it had a reason, it jus' was." And isn't that such a comforting thought? That this whole experience had been for nothing, merely a cruel game played by some forces they can never understand? Calhoun is wildly unsettled by it all, but all he knows just now is that he is glad it let Calypso out alive. The rest — can come later.

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calypso knows that she is broken. it comes to her in moments of awareness, brief snippets of lucidity that pierce even the most fractured mind. she knows that things are muddled and complicated, that she is uncomfortable to be around. she can see their relief as easily as their concern, their fear, and a small part of her hates it. she hates it with every piece of herself -- they do not deserve this. none of them who have received the sharpness of her tongue or the uncertainty of her reality deserve what she puts them through. for all that they had tried to pull her from the grasp of the mist they deserved the calypso of before. not the one who had come after, or even the one that had existed during. there were... a lot o' others taken. it is the first she has heard of it, and while she had wondered she had imagined that perhaps it was only their little island that had been affected. had hoped, really, that the reach of the mist had not gone beyond the cay. "how many? were d'ey all... returned? are d'ey hurt?" something almost like panic seeps in to her voice, then, as fear for the many others sunk in to her bones. if they experienced even a piece of what she had.... ... if they were children, like grit, who had nobody to protect them... nothing else that he says really seems to register beyond knowing that there were others. many others. maybe, then, it was not just her own past catching up with her. maybe it was all her fault. if you go blind then i'll describe the view

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if you're lost, then i'll find you Calhoun only has partial answers, and while it might be easier to shelter @Calypso from the truth, that's not who he is. To even consider it would be doing her a disservice; she had not hidden the harsh reality from him all those months ago, and he will not do it to her now. "I— I don' know," he says with a slight shake of his head and a furrow in his brow, his gaze focused on the waves lapping over his paws. "Cam was...taken too. It ain't sent her back," Calhoun admits, his ears slanting back against his skull. Camelia is just one more soul he couldn't protect, one more he couldn't save. And now the mist is gone, seemingly taking her with it — wherever that is. It unsettles him, to think that he may never have answers. That he may never have a reason why his daughters are without a mother. He, like Calypso, is full of self-deprecating thoughts; these last few months have left scars on both of them — on anyone who was impacted by this inexplicable storm. Calhoun finds himself wondering if the suffering ever stop, or if this life has simply been invented to be some cruel, beautiful disaster.

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he has no answers and she wants to yell at him. she wants to shout and rage and demand that he find out -- that he learn everything that he can. at the same time she mentally berates herslf for not knowing more, either. maybe if she had just tried harder... maybe she could have found others. all calypso knew was her own experience (and that of grit) and to think that there were others who had been through the same... to think that camelia might have been one of them... how was she ever going to face the children again? how could she look at his girls and know that she came back and their mother didn't? panic swells again and she takes a gasping breath as she fights to settle her heart, which had kicked in to high gear at the thought. "i..." floundering for the right words, the right things to say. "i'm sorry. i did not see her.... i..." god, she could she have saved camelia? had she failed him that badly? "i'm sorry cal. i'm sorry i didn't find her." guilt piles heavy on her shoulders as she looks down at the water washing over her paws, zoning out on the spot where her toes had once been. @Calhoun if you go blind then i'll describe the view

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