Blood of the Sea, Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter 38: Pluviophile

Astrophel

The better part of another week was spent waiting; the six who had arrived already made a couple lean-to’s in the meantime, but when the carts carrying their fellows arrived from Kildangan, the real work began - tearing down trees and cutting planks for actual housing.

It was decided that they would construct one large building where everyone could stay. Individual rooms would be sectioned off, but the goal was for them all to be under one roof, to minimize their spread in this land that wasn’t theirs.

The idea sat poorly with Astrophel; this idea of living in a place that wasn’t truly theirs, but with the call of the ocean in his veins, and the words of his goddess in his ears, he knew he had to make the most of it. Here, the place between hope and heartbreak.

His heart was surely breaking.

The mood shifted the day it rained.

Back sore from bending and lifting as he labored with his people over moving timber from the forest’s edge to the workbenches and chopping blocks, and from there to the base of the building they were seeing slowly take shape, the sweat on his skin felt like a measure of reassurance that he was doing what he could. The clouds have been rolling in since mid morning. At first they started like mist rising from the ocean: wispy, incomplete, inconsequential. As the day drew on, and the number of splinters grew in his hands, the clouds coalesced and darkened and shifted the sun behind a shadowed curtain. Full sunlight became passing shadows upon the ground, became shafts of sunlight, became overcast light. The clouds grew full and heavy and the air became saturated with moisture and the coming promise of rain.

The day had been a long one, full of exertion and the weariness of moving one log after another while the air was pierced by calls to watch out for the next falling tree. Astrophel could feel his legs slowing down, and his eyes turning skyward. The wind picked up, tousling his hair as scents of pine and grass and sawdust and a hint of salt fill his nose. Sul stands next to him, torso bare and speckled with scars from the islands as he leans on the handle of an ax, ignoring the pile of kindling at his feet in favor of turning his face into the wind and closing his eyes. Astrophel smiles at his friend, feeling the tension uncoil from between his shoulders. Sul’s eyes crack open and he sees Astrophel, “Rain. Can you taste it? She’s reaching for us.”

His skin prickles, and not just from the cold coming in off the ocean. “You think so?”

Sul laughs, throwing his arms wide, the ax handle still in one hand, “Would you think this is anything else?”

Astrophel’s mouth quirks, “The weather?”

Sul chops the ax into a round of wood waiting to be split and trudges over to Astrophel, clasping Astrophel’s face in both of his hands, “She missed us too.” The sky rumbles softly and the clouds finally crack, water now pittering, pattering, and then pouring down on them, quickly soaking Astrophel to the bone. Sul grins, a wild twinkle in his eye, as he yells, “Eulla missed us!”

Those gathered send up a cry of triumph and joy that gets momentarily drowned out by the thunder as it grows and rumbles and rasps, the rain pelting upon their skin like hungry kisses from the goddess that holds them so dear to her heart, and knows how they hunger for her touch. Tools are left behind, the people gather out in the open, and joy turns to dance turns to laughter and hugs. There are tears, but it is no longer the kind of tears that are so full of pain that your chest aches. It is the kind of tears that answer a long awaited call. The kind of tears that come when you don’t know if you should laugh or cry, so you do both. And they do both. And it feels better than rain ever has.

They set aside construction for the rest of the day, taking time to sit with one another and talk about home and the sea and the ‘urgas. They laugh, and they laugh, and they cry, and the rain keeps falling even as it lightens into a gentle but present pitter-pattering on the trees and on the foundation of a house they are piecing together. Astrophel soaks it all up like a parched plant, and he realizes that this is what Eulla meant when she spoke of the place between heartbreak and hope.