* * *
When the morning came, Emera woke feeling like hell, but better than the night before. She was startled to find the scorpion still on her chest reminding her that the past days hadn’t been just a bad dream. She studied it carefully, looked at the shiny armor plates, and could see that it wasn’t solid cobalt, but that its shell was crazed with streaks of pale blue. It appeared to be sleeping, but when she moved, its eyes snapped open and it scurried to her shoulder. It was still raining, but less, and she could see the sun starting to break through the clouds on the horizon. She resolved to wait until it had dried out. In the meantime, she was hungry again.
She tried to build a small fire, but all of the wood was too damp for her to overcome with her rudimentary skills. Instead, she cracked open some mussels, and found that if she shut her eye and didn’t think about it, they just slid right down her throat.
A few hours later, the rock had dried out enough for her to climb.
The climb back up was difficult, with fear and anxiety compounding her fatigue. It was perhaps the most cautious climb of Emera’s life, where she carefully chose the easiest route up and stopped to rest at every opportunity. When she reached the crack, she was exhausted, but only slightly moreso than when she had started. She stopped to check the fabric that she had torn from her shirt and wrapped around her knuckles, pulling it to make sure that it would not slip. When she was satisfied, she began to work her way up the crack. Her hands and feet were healed, but still very sore, and soon the pain of wedging them into the crack blended to become one long, low note rather than the differentiated symphony of pain that she expected.
When she reached the pocket that had hidden the scorpion, she was tempted to reach in and kill it. But she didn’t. Out the corner of her eye she saw the scorpion perched on her shoulder, but if it had a feeling either way about its mundane brethren, there was no way to tell. Another moment’s hesitation, and Emera moved on. It had not acted out of malice, and there was nothing to be gained from killing it.
A few minutes later, she had pulled herself onto the grass at the top of the cliff. She got a leg over the edge, and pulled herself up, rolling onto her back, feeling her muscles begin to relax for the first time in two days.
She was brought out of her calm by the feeling of the scorpion’s claws digging into her upper arm, and when she looked at it, it was motionless, like a startled animal. She looked around, and then back at the scorpion, but she couldn’t tell which way it was looking, as its eight eyes seemed to point in all directions. After a moment of complete silence, Emera heard it too, a group of Watchers moving towards her as they patrolled the coast, watching the horizon for ships or storms. Emera got to her feet, feeling like an bent old woman, and then ran towards the treeline. she hadn’t realized how tired she was, and her legs wanted to be about a step behind her, resulting in a stumbling run across the uneven ground.
When she reached the relative safety of the trees, she collapsed. Despite the jarring ride, the blue scorpion was still attached to her shoulder, its claws digging into her shirt.
After she had caught her breath and her thoughts were no longer clouded with panic, she got up and moved a little deeper into the trees. She needed to think, to plan. Caught in the vice of fate, Emera despaired. Even at the bottom of the cliff, it had seemed as though all she had to do was make it back up and everything would be better. But with that accomplished she felt the weight of the consequences bearing down upon her. She looked down at her left arm, where the tattoos that would frame her Seals still surprised her on occasion, even after a year of bearing them. Three patterns, two small and one large, two to bind the island to her and her to the island, and one for the Skills she would need in whatever profession she pursued.
If she revealed that she had formed a link with the Island without the safeguards of the Seals, she would be forced to leave, to crew a ship or perhaps simply be exiled. And she couldn’t break the link, either, the backlash could burn out her mind or kill her outright. At the same time, she had no idea how she would hide the scorpion, especially after she was Bound and went to live in the Vaar barracks. She didn’t cry, but she sat there, paralyzed, lacking the will even to raise her head until the chill of the approaching night brought her out of it. With the cold cutting through her tattered clothes, she began to walk towards her parents’ house. She had reached no conscious decision, but her mind had settled on a course nonetheless. She would do her best to hide the scorpion until some other option presented itself.
When she reached the house, it was lit up like a party, but silent and absent all mirth. She did not simply turn the handle on the front door as she had her entire life, but knocked, like a stranger. Something had changed down on the rocks, it was no longer her home. She had left the scorpion in a stack of boxes at the side of the house, hoping that she was right and that it somehow understood her, understood that it could not come in with her.
Emera’s mother opened the door, her face drawn with worry and fatigue. For a heartbeat she just stood there, looking at her. Then she was through the doorway, arms wrapped around her, squeezing against her bruised ribs and sore muscles.
“Emera! What happened?” she said when she finally released her grip. “Your eye!”
Emera reached up and rubbed her eye again, feeling it still swollen shut. “I was climbing, and I fell,” she said.
Her father appeared behind her mother’s shoulder, and Emera could see the relief in his eyes. “Come, let’s get some tea in you.”
At the mention of tea, Emera felt a wave of relief wash over her. Tea was her father’s response to anything. It was a way of relaxing, grieving, and celebrating, each event with its own special blend. There was no event so terrible that it couldn’t be dealt with through the rubric of tea, and even that tiny bit of normalcy was enough to loosen some of the anxiety that had been strangling her. Emera and her mother sat down in the front room and she could hear her father in the kitchen going through the rack of ceramic jars, and a moment later he came out with a mug full of steaming liquid. It was strong, black tea with citrus and something sweet that Emera couldn’t identify. By the time her father joined them with two more mugs, she could already feel whatever it was in the tea working, adding a layer of insulation between her and her injuries, and making her muscles feel loose and free.
The three of them talked, with Emera giving them an edited version of what had happened, reducing the fall to something survivable and omitting both scorpions entirely. By the time she had finished talking, she was too tired to stand up, and her parents had to practically carry her to her room.