CONTENT WARNING: Mentioned suicide, survivor’s guilt

Period cramps were exactly how Esko remembered them being. Painful, exhausting, and dysphoria-inducing. Not to mention that it was messy and ruining his only pair of clean clothes at the moment. Menstrual products weren’t a part of the supplies his city sent Offerings out with.

He’d spent most of his time in the little cave already, trying to sleep off how horrible he felt. Unfortunately, his attempts to rest were always interrupted by anything from his whirring mind to an inconsiderate bug. Dusk was falling again by now, and he could hear Astrid hunting for insects outside. There was quite a bit of shouting involved.

With Finner out taking the first swim he’d had in weeks to celebrate his healed gills, Esko and Greta were left alone together in the den. The feelings it sparked were complicated, to say the least. Greta was warm and kind, but Esko suspected her of thinking more with her heart than she ever did with her head. Also her stomach. That woman was nothing short of ravenous, and it showed through in her enthusiasm about food. She’d sensed Esko being under the weather when he asked to eat inside the den instead of outside with the others last night, and had taken it upon herself to make sure he was eating and drinking. He hadn’t even had to explain to her that he was on his monthly for her to catch on. 

She sat beside him now, muttering to herself about solutions for his cramps, but couldn’t come up with anything. Eventually, she just ended up gently patting his thigh like a concerned mother and speaking aloud to no one in particular.

“I could’ve sworn I brought some herbs with me when I left home,” she huffed, resting her chin on one of her hands. “I guess maybe I forgot them or used them already. I could’ve sworn I had some that would alleviate pain on me at some point…’’

Esko didn’t respond, but he did listen to what she said, namely because it distracted him from the discomfort he was in.

“I probably left them behind somehow,” she concluded to herself after a moment. “Things got bad and I was focused on just running away at that point, so it makes sense that I’d forget them somewhere. Stupid of me, though. If I’m so disorganized all the time, there’s no way I’ll be able to thwart Grandma’s plans.”

Why would anyone try to thwart an old woman? Esko grumbled in the quiet of his mind, closing his eyes and letting himself imagine what Greta’s grandmother would look like.

The Troll girl sighed, leaning back against the wall of the little cave as she did. “I wanted to save all those humans, I didn’t think she’d figure it out and just hurry up the process. I’ve never seen so much fire and so much blood…”

A pang echoed in Esko’s chest, but only for a moment. What’s wrong with you? He asked himself. You’re supposed to hate humanity right now. Get your shit together.

Yeah, he hated humanity. Always would, he promised himself silently, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t feel bad for Greta for seeing something so brutal. Her voice broke as she spoke of it, and he quietly cracked one eyelid open to watch her sit there, shaking.

“It was awful… There was so much smoke and screaming and nobody batted an eye and- and there were families and I just couldn’t-”

She stopped her train of thought when Esko, on impulse, reached out a hand to touch hers for reasons he didn’t truly understand. Something about the far-away look that had begun to fill her eyes distressed him deeply, like it might rip her away from the waking world like the tide washing sand out to sea. Her voice had become frantic and she was shaking, as though perhaps fighting off the claws of the past, trying to drag her back to the previous chapter of her story. Big, watery green eyes met his, broken like a mirror abandoned in a verdant forest.

And then she was crying and embracing Esko, blubbering like a frightened child. “I’m such a fucking coward, I couldn’t even stand up to her… I just packed my things and ran… I’m so sorry…”

She smelled like sunlight and wildflowers and warm evenings and a little bit of campfire smoke, and she was soft to the touch, like a satin blanket. Though not one for physical touch, Esko found himself leaning into her embrace and closing his eyes, letting her tears fall on his shoulder while her hair draped around them both like a waterfall of honey. Greta, he noticed, was very careful to angle her antlers away from him while she held him, handling herself with all the gentle grace of the caribou mother he had seen at the zoo once as a little kid. Her embrace was strong but tender, familiar in every little way he could imagine.

If it weren’t for the obvious femininity of her voice, he probably could’ve mistaken her for Ellen with his eyes shut.

Maybe that was why he hugged her so tightly in return. Maybe that was why he carefully rubbed her back, doing his best not to stick his fingers in the gaping wooden hole that ran along her spinal cord, exposing it, and whispered to her that everything was going to be okay. Maybe he felt safe letting her hold him because she reminded him uniquely of home. “You tried,” he told her in a quiet but firm voice. “That’s what matters.”

They must’ve stayed like that for at least a good thirty minutes, likely dozing off together after a point. It was like being held by a little patch of daytime, wind shaking the shadows of the leaves. Esko might’ve cried by the time it was over, but he quickly found that he was unable to recall. It was Astrid who dragged them both back to reality.

“Are you two just gonna sit there being sad, or are we gonna get this show on the road?” the Gnome asked impatiently, leaning casually against the entrance to the cave like a disinterested highschool student.

The four of them had been discussing leaving these past few nights, but it was certainly a bit sudden when Esko really thought about it. They’d all agreed that sitting in one place for too long sounded like a terrible idea – three of them were some form of fugitive after all – and yet it still felt a few heartbeats too soon. There hadn’t been any sort of plan developed yet, no route chosen, no rations packed, no preparation of any sort. Just a promise that once Finner’s gills had healed, they’d hit the road.

Something about it frightened Esko a little more than he felt okay with admitting, even to himself. Greta and Astrid were already a long, long way from home, and soon he and Finner would be as well. They amounted to a group of confused teenagers, now preparing to hit the road into the great unknown.

Who even were they? Small, plucky Astrid, who had run away because of lack of parental support and a few mysterious pranks taken too far, but who could kill a bear all on her own with nothing but spite and a kitchen knife. Aloof, prideful Finner, who had lived in the shelter of one body of water his whole life, yet could hypnotize and drown foes with something as seemingly innocuous as a melody. Brazen, emotional Greta, who had fled her home after failing to stand up to her family’s violent crusades against humankind, and yet put her all into trying to help others. Bitter, frightened Esko, who had never even been outside the walls of his home city. Who had lost everything he’d ever loved. Who swore revenge on the entirety of his own species. Who was lost and had no idea where to go or what to do. Whose only experiences with nature came from botanical gardens and zoos. Their advantages were few, and their flaws were numerous and prominent.

Would we even have a chance at surviving if we went out there? If we walked away into whatever is beyond those woods?

A very, very large part of Esko doubted that any of them had a chance to survive the Wild. He knew without knowing the details that it was going to be arduous, dangerous, and downright terrifying. He knew it, and he knew he still had to try.

So he got to his feet, ignoring his cramps, and grabbed his bag. Man up, Esko. It’s time to enter the unknown.

---

The sky was an overwhelming blanket of ink, silent and dotted only by little pinpricks of light like holes poked in the container so they could breathe. Esko probably would’ve appreciated it more if he’d been feeling less skittish, though. Something in the biting cold of the night air heightened all his fears, and his anxiety spiked every time he realized how hard it was for him to see. He’d practically attached himself to a very unamused Finner, pretending not to be afraid of the dark. The other man’s clawed hand was surprisingly warm in his, fingers woven together like a basket.

“You’ll be alright,” Greta assured him from his right, gently placing a hand on the blonde’s shoulder and offering a reassuring squeeze. “You have us now, remember?”

Esko would never willingly admit it, but hearing the sound of her voice and feeling the touch of her hand did help ease the biting fear in his ribcage by a little bit. Between her and Finner with Astrid leading the way ahead, he knew it was unlikely that he would get lost. Now, with both their hands making contact with him, he felt it was nearly impossible to become separated from them. Patiently, Finner guided his steps over any rocks or snags in their path while Greta brought up the rear and occasionally hoisted him over rough terrain despite his sounds of protest. Had the situation been different, he probably would’ve elbowed her in the ribs for it, but right now was definitely not the time. Getting dropped in the rocks or deadfall didn’t sound preferable to Esko.

“So,” Astrid’s voice rang out up ahead, “Do we have a specific destination or…?”

Good question.

Finner blinked his luminous yellow eyes as slowly and with as much ennui as a cat. His pupils flicked back and forth between Esko and the path ahead of them where Astrid stood in a silent bid for an answer. Esko wasn’t sure if it quite got across in the dark, but he glowered at the larger Troll in response. Of course, that didn’t do anything, so Esko relented after a moment and called ahead with the only instructions he could think of.

“Let’s just keep going until we hit dawn,” the blonde called through the inky woods ahead of them. “Then we’ll wedge ourselves in a shadowy place until the next night.”

A simple command from someone who was far from a qualified leader at the moment, but it seemed to sate the curiosity of the others, which was all Esko really needed. He clambered over another large log with Finner’s help from the front and Greta’s assistance from the back, quietly hoping that it would be a good enough plan. The thoughts gnawing at the back of his mind pressed forward as his confidence wavered. What if you die out here? What if they kill you? What if they leave you behind?

Mentally, he swatted them all away like flies. He knew there was no real base on which his worries were founded, most of them were just the result of his lizard-monkey brain freaking out over nothing, but there was one worry that stuck the second it entered his mind.

You shouldn’t be leading these people. You couldn’t even save Ellen.

Ellen. Short blonde hair, shining hazel eyes, and an infectious smile… she and Esko probably could’ve passed as siblings back home if they wanted to. Ellen, who was empathetic and funny. Ellen, who gave the best hugs in the world. Ellen, who never even said goodbye.

Why did she never say goodbye? Why did she never even tell him? He could’ve helped! He should’ve noticed the warning signs!

Her last words to him were “You’ll be okay. Be brave, alright?”

At the time, he had no clue why she was saying that. “I’m always brave,” he told her as gently elbowed her goodbye. “See you tomorrow.”

I should’ve noticed.

Her parents were wonderful people. When they’d found her, they’d been overcome by grief. It was her father who called Esko’s mother and asked to break the news to him. They both cried together over the phone, and when Esko ran to her home to check if it was all true, he was handed a neatly folded note.

At this point, his mind blurred most of it. The majority consisted of her reasons why, which largely had to do with the kind of society they were living in and announced herself as a woman to anyone reading. It boggled everybody’s mind except for his, but nobody really commented on it despite how society told them to treat people who were Others. Whether or not his parents and her parents would’ve accepted them both would forever be a mystery to Esko. That said, when the slip of paper touched his trembling fingers, her mother had informed him “H- she left a note for you in there.”

There, in the neatest handwriting possible for Ellen (not very neat), read the simple words:

I’ll always be with you.

He sure hoped so.

“Esko, look up.”

The blonde nearly jumped out of his skin at the soft sound of Finner’s whisper. The boy next to him directed his gaze towards the sky above the clearing they stood in with a clawed finger. Above them, in beautiful shades of green, blue, and purple, the Northern lights danced above their heads.

“Wow…” tumbled from Esko’s lips before he could stop it. Surrounded by dark pines, it seemed like the gates of a unique heaven had opened up above the quartet, beckoning them in. Greta spurred herself forward on her hooves and danced and twirled beneath the borealis above them. It suddenly felt like Esko’s breath had been sucked from his body, and he swore that in those stars and shimmering lights, there had to be some kind of magic. Some kind of brilliant spell that made silent tears slip down his cheeks without consulting him first.

Ellen would’ve loved this.

That was when a bright light different from the aurora borealis Esko and company were witnessing shot across the sky like a silent bullet. The shooting star zoomed closer to Earth than Esko had ever dreamed was possible. Then, without any sense of pause, it sailed over the horizon and disappeared above the trees somewhere.

Its fall was heralded only by the sounds of numerous startled birds shrieking and squawking and taking to the sky. Astrid, who had been tracking it with wonder in her eyes, turned back to the rest of the crew. “Any chance any of you wanna go find a meteorite?”

“Do we have a choice?” Finner inquired, briefly tearing his eyes from the sight above him to glance at Greta, who was stumbling around trying to become un-dizzy. Everyone already knew the answer, but someone still had to ask.

Turning in the direction they were sure the little space rock had fallen, they set off through the woods once more.