Welcome to Gaia! ::

Lithian shrugged, half his mind still lagging on Cas but a part of him grateful that Ara was willing and ready to change the subject. “It didn’t seem so bad at first. They just said they wanted to explore…and I don’t think they meant to leave me in the snow, just tease me, maybe, and worry me. I probably got lost all on my own and when the storm came up, they needed to get back…too dangerous to go look for me…”

Perhaps he was making excuses for them, but though they hadn’t been especially nice, it hadn’t seemed like their intent was to get him killed. Not to mention, the more he thought back on that day, the more Lithian realized that if it had never happened, he never would have met Casseth to begin with. So, in a sense, he had them to thank for that. Perhaps it was Abronaxus’ will.

When his thought process flit from that to how his emotions had spiraled out of control for Casseth, though, Lithian’s cheeks burned again and he huffed. Or, perhaps it was just chance, and meeting Cas was the last thing Abronaxus wanted. Lithian winced at the thought. What if—?

A low, rumbling growl from his left startled Lith to an abrupt stop and his head jerked around. Two, glinting black eyes met his, framed by an otherwise silver-white coat that blended in near perfectly with the snow. The beast was massive, at least his size, fangs bared and hackles raised, crouched in the snow.

Lithian’s body froze briefly stiff, and then he swallowed. “Ara…” He moved his hands as gradually as he could manage beneath his cloak, not wanting to startle the beast into attacking as he unstoppered the flasks at his waist. A jabrvin, if he’d done his research right. And, despite its already significant size, a pup, Lithian guessed. Adults were known to grow up to three times the size of the runt facing them now. “We have company.”

The jabrvin leapt.

Lithian swept sidelong, plucking at his magic, drawing the water out like a lasso and snapping hard across the beast’s snout as he crouched into the snow. A sharp yip echoed out at the first hit, as though it didn’t expect its ‘prey’ to fight back, but it quickly gained its bearings, hunching down only a few feet from Lithian as it regained its balance and focusing its stare on him entirely.

Lithian blinked, and then laughed — a nervous laugh, maybe — but, after all he’d been through, both with her, others, and alone, he certainly felt far more confident than he once had when it came to dealing with stray beasts.

“That we do,” he agreed, and then moved. Snapping his wrists down and then in a scissor formation, he cut at the snow, pulling a similar technique to the one he had in the cave with Casseth, but a little more fine tuned, now: slicing into and melting and meshing his water with the snow until he had a far more sizeable mass to work with. By the time the jabrvin leapt again, he was ready.

One foot snapping out he rolled his weight to the right and lifted his palms, then slammed them hard, using his grip on his magic and the water therein to crash the weight of it against the charging canine. It jerked to the side under the force of the water, tumbling over and yipping, then snarling all the more as it fought to right itself. Lithian felt his breath come heavier, steam forming in the air as he panted, watching the predator with a focused stare. When it leaned low, muscles bunching to pounce again, Lithian snatched back at his water, slipping and sliding it under the snow at the animal’s feet just before it leapt disrupting its balance again, though this only seemed to make it more irate.

“Ara…” Seconds after pulling up an almost doubled supply of water, thanks to more added snow and slush, Lithian heard a second growl at his back, and froze, the mass of his element suspended in midair still over the first of their attackers.

Lithian stared, pulse thrumming at an impressive rate as he watched the situation unfold. Casseth. Casseth was here. Casseth was right there with his weapon shoved between the hungry jaws of a hungry jabrvin. Lithian shook his head sharply, shifted his stance and swung, rotating and crashing the full weight of all the water under his control into the side of the beast snapping at Casseth, sending it skidding far to the left. Before it could regain its balance, Lithian dipped, gathering his water low and then slinging it up, catching the jabrvin like puppet doll and sending it high as he could manage before jerking his hands apart and splaying his fingers, turning the water into a cloud of water droplets and leaving the animal to drop with an ominous crack of bones when it hit ice.

It didn’t rise again.

A third pup lingered at the outer edges of their ‘fighting zone’ but after seeing the second of its kin drop, it merely snarled, yapping at them several times before fleeing off into the snow. Lithian’s stance dropped immediately after, the water under his control splattering against the snow like icy rain, and his attention was already dancing between Araceli and Casseth as he plucked the amount of water he needed up from the main source and tucked it back into his flasks.

“Casseth…what are you—? Ara…” He flushed, unsure how to handle the situation and already tense, well aware that things could only get worse now that the immediate threat of wild beasts was eliminated. “Are you both alright…?”

Lithian swore, darting up to stand between the two despite the race in his pulse. “Please,” he begged, “…don’t…Ara, Casseth helped us, you saw the beast go for him. He’s my friend, and even if you don’t trust him, he’s not hurting you, or me, and what good would it do you two to fight each other? You’ve done nothing to each other yet. Cas…”

Lithian’s eyes flicked to an lingered on Casseth, expression pinched with regret and apology.

“Please leave,” he said. “Thank you, but it’s not worth—if you got hurt because…” He breathed out, pain tight and tense in his throat, “…please go…”

“Cas—” Lithian stifled the rest of his words in his throat, shut his eyes, and pulled his cloak tighter in around himself, though his fingers shook as he did. Casseth was safer away from Ara, and the same for Ara, he reminded himself — so why did watching Cas run, hurt by his words more than any physical wounds, feel like a punch and rip to the gut? Lithian’s eyes stung and he squeezed them tighter. This was no time to cry.

Casseth would be fine.

Casseth had been fine, long before he met him. He didn’t need Lith around to ******** his life up and get him into trouble. Lithian’s chest burned, a tight, roiling, knot, and he didn’t dare open his eyes yet for fear they would spill over despite his best efforts. “You didn’t do anything wrong,” he whispered to no one, too quiet for even Araceli to hear — swept up by the winter wind. “I’m so sorry…”

‘Forgive me.’

He wouldn’t, Lith half expected. He wouldn’t blame Cas if he never showed up again, but the thought hurt like an iron rod red hot and twisting inside him, and so he shoved it away, unable to handle it for a moment. Ara lead him back to camp. Whether or not she spoke to him, Lith barely noticed, his focus entirely distracted. He had a single day left to spend on this continent, and now he may well have ruined his last chances to speak with the one person he’d met on it who made all the ice and snow worth dealing with.