His surroundings felt most familiar at the height of summer, everything burnished by the sun's unrelenting gaze. There was a heaviness to the air that sat high on his shoulders, the soft drone of insects a constant backdrop to his exertions. The sweat collecting beneath his scaled hide attested to as much, tingling as it patterned his sides in a layered, honeycomb gleam. Emrys found it to be a not entirely unpleasant sensation, the chill a fitting accompaniment to the dull, satisfied ache that threaded through his limbs. His throat was parched, however, and the kirin automatically changed direction, ears angled toward the promising sound of running water. That was another thing that had taken some getting used to - the idea that water could be found in excess, shared by many mouths and many creatures without the threat of running dry. It was half the reason he now pushed himself harder during training, even if it left him tired and wrung out at the end of the day. Losing water to the elements was no longer a death sentence.Still, it had been a jarring lesson to learn all those months ago. Leaving his homeland had never been a conscious decision; he'd simply walked until sand became scrub brush, the burnt brown palette giving way to splashes of brighter color in his periphery. When he'd come back to himself, ravenous and lightheaded, it was to find the world had altered around him. With his ears unstoppered, birdsong found purchase, lilting and foreign to a desert-bred creature. Roving bands of animals fed on fat plants, some of them scampering practically over his feet, apparently unbothered by his presence. Green dominated his surroundings, so bright that it hurt his eyes to take in the sight, the foliage almost glowing in its healthy state. But the most astonishing aspect had been to blink and find raindrops clinging to his eyelashes, a backward step hindered by thick, choking mud. In those first few seconds, it'd seemed like a fever dream, something borne of a mind pushed to its absolute limits. Or perhaps it was all that had come before which he'd imagined, a life lived in mind only.
That first night, he lay in a miserable huddle beneath the downpour, too exhausted to take another step, even to find shelter. And yet being at the mercy of the storm had felt cleansing, in a way, the rain pattering down on his dust-clotted shape, removing evidence of all that had come before. If he strained his memory, he could remember parts of the journey that had carried him to this paradise. Snippets of places overlaid the impression of emotions, everything wreathed in shadows too thick to penetrate. It was only when he recalled the taste of blood in his mouth that he shied away from such recollections, afraid of what lay on the other side of the veil. It unsettled him, that his body acted without creating memories, that he could be somewhere, doing something, and remember only the dreamlike edges it beheld. Here, at least, he could afford to try and start fresh, to curb whatever madness struck him down in the heat of the moment.
The stream sketched itself out of the undergrowth, barely flowing above the abundance of slick pebbles that lined its bottom. He paused to take in his surroundings, listening for disturbances on the breeze. When nothing suspicious presented itself, Emrys bent his head, the cream of his throat working as he drank deeply. Cool and sweet, he chased the last of the droplets with his tongue, feeling the shock of it clatter through his insides. He swallowed a pleased hum, then extended his tail to dip the tuft in the slow-flowing water. When it was saturated, he raised it to his back and used it to sponge off the worst of the sweat stink. No sense in making it easy for a predator to locate him, not when he was too weary to put up a proper fight.