Hakk stood on the bank-side, before him, the parted craft burned a bright haze blue-purple as explosions played in the space surrounding. Forms of beings scurried along the coast carrying away bodies, boats departed in the oncoming tide only to be pushed back to shore and capsized.
His hair trickled watering the sands below, forming small divots in the fine particles. Over his hunched shoulders wrapped a thick darkly colored overcoat that ran to his knees and barely wrapped about his front.
Down at his feet, the orange haired man lay slightly crumpled at his side while an older man with thining shoulder-length grey hair hunched over him. The elder had one hand on the younger man's wrist and the opposite about the neck, his face turned to focus on the breath of him.
Hakk watched as his lips moved without sound, 1-2-3, he stopped carefully he looked to the ankles holding them strangely he pulled and twisted in a swift motion.
-Pop-
The man flinched as his breaths shortened, the elder repeated it on the other ankle, then turned his face from Hakk with the wind words escaped as the current carried it beyond his ears. His vision trailed off and his knee gave a slight way in the soft ground.
The elder man stood up as two figures approached with a cot and placed the one on it and carried him away. The elder man dusted off the sand grains from his short-sleeved tunic cloths front, his skin goose bumping as he rubbed at his forearms.
The elder turned to him and eyed him up and down. In the rain Hakk's skin took a palish hue as a haze of grey hung about him.
"Truly you couldn't have stopped to find some clothes? Are you trying to provoke whomever you rescue?" His brows furrowed as his nostrils expanded. "Or worse illness?"
Hakk shrugged his shoulders.
"Are you playing at more gallant work?"
"No."
"I see…" The older one looked out to the small boats paddling to the bodies. "Come on then, before you seek the rest." Hunching over he folded his hands across his chest and began trudging through the shifting ground as his sandals slipped at each venture.
Against the commotion, Hakks frame flinched as the storm arose once more. His vision cast itself across the sea as the tides ran against the small boats with its hands bracing against the drive. Bodies afloat now drifted to the ocean floor for a short while more.
With his back to the winds, Hakk turned following the way before as others trailed to and from on the winding trail that settled on a well-paved road.
Some distance from the road up a short hill a large slightly ajar gate of a walnut hue was set into bleached white limestone walls that lifted and dipped with the landscape about it. The greenery nearly engulfed the towns outside and spilled from it's inside.
Inside the borough weaved about the varying surface heights, the windows shutters all barred rattled in the wind. The line further filed up the hill until it ended at a long row dwelling built into the nearby cliffed plateau. Near, to it, a small garden that shuttered in the storm rose alongside it and dropped behind it.
Hakk walked into a side room where five bodies lay on beds or the floor as people tended them. The elder man shuffled in and out of the back room as he ferried various items to each one uttering instructions to each.
"There are clothes in the room at the end of the building, follow the hall and find some that fit." The elder stopped as he placed a blanket over one individual and looked up to Hakk whos body was how shaking ever so slightly.
Hakk's glance shifted to the hallway that seemed to go on forever and back at the other who'd disappeared from the room again.
"A bed too if you are-" The older one poked his head out as his voice trailed, his vision shifted to the chair near the door that now bore the cloak.
"FOR-THELOVEOFITALLKEEPTHECLOTHONUNTILYOUFINDMORETOWEAR!" The elderly man took a deep breath. "This isn't the place..." The others around him froze. "Excuse me... please carry on your duties." A shade of rose fell across his face as he vanished back into the other room to the tune of clanging glass.
Outside the shutters rattled as Hakk traveled the corridor, dim light crystals fastened in ornate holds along the walls lighting the pathway in an eerie brightness. The end of the hallway opened to an arched arboretum.
The door was a glass work of flowers and plants carved in glass laid in lead. Hakk slowly opened it, a line of windows greeted his vision as the lightning flashed across the unshuttered glass above him. A window seat covered the entire facing wall with window ledges made deep fitting all manner of strange plant among them. Books piled on the cushioned area and on the floor lay mixed with planted containers. Against ever wall in the room were shelves for books or plants that crawled or stuck or shined with strange budding flowers. Shuttered windows lined the right side as the left burred into the cliff face with a small well-made bed tucked in an alcove. Opposite of it stood a wardrobe slightly taller than he.
Hakk swung the doors open.
----
The orange haired man tossed to and fro on the cot, his eyes shifted open as he moved to sit. The vision before him wavered, arching his head he looked about, people upon people shuffled about as words were spoken slowly mingled in his ears, a strong breeze filtered in from the top of his head.
He watched an old man approached a small child who was sitting in the chair a heavy blanket wrapped around them.
"May I look you over." The words garbled as his head throbbed.
The small child shook their head as they pulled the cloak tightly.
"It would help me heal you better if you would permit me."
The two stood off as the child's eyes strayed up and down the elder man. and then trailed off behind into his own eyes. Suddenly an arm poked from the wool fort as the child's eyes narrowed as the breeze rushed passed into the room.
"Can someone close that door?" The elder called as he began to wash the child's arm.
"Where'd the bean pole go?"
The older one looked to the corner of his eye to see Hakk dressed in a pair of pants to short and a shirt to long, and a pair of worn sandals.
"Did none of the rest fit?"
Hakk shrugged his shoulders as he walked over to where the orange haired boy had lain.
"Remind me to get you to the tailors as soon as this is all sorted."
Silence filled the air and the child's eyes darted from the elder man and something behind him.
"Least someone closed the door!"
-----
Hakk stood against the wind, rain clattered on the cobbled streets as small outpourings ran the alleyways he wondered. Weaving through the small double story homes he ended on a slope downwards to a lake. The houses here were of wood built into the sloping side, some angled in strange ways as they tilted, here the light seeped through the cracks in the wood as rain etched away at the slightly rotten wood grains.
He trailed down the wide stone made path stairs, mud settled as it warned at swallow his feet. Stopping at the latter end a small house grew up surrounded by an extended roof and fencing that spanned the lake before it. A few shigs huddled in the corner of the fenced off area, their wool coats drenched as their hooved feet sunk into the mire below. The rains picked up as the animals shuffled between them a small ebony colored form jostled with a few strands of orange slipping from under its cover.
"Where do you plan on running from here."
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