It doesn’t dance or play, it doesn’t sink against my skin with a sweet perfume, or breeze through my hair with a fresh kiss.
Not like it did in Annwyn.
The rain weeps down, and water floods the ground, but even that doesn’t sweep away the stench of this place. The sun dips and the moon crests, but there is no harmony with the goddesses slumbering in their eggshell stars. This horizon is tepid and lacking.
Nothing feels as alive here as it did at home. But then, maybe those are just the make-believe memories of a little girl. Maybe Annwyn wasn’t like that at all, and I’ve forgotten.
If I have, I’d rather keep pretending. I like the way it is in my mind—overflowing with a vivaciousness that saturated my every sense.
Here, my senses are saturated too, but not in a good way.
Derfort Harbor is still drenched from this morning’s showers. Everything here is always waterlogged from either the sea or the sky. Sometimes both. There isn’t a single wood-pitched roof that isn’t sodden or a weathered door that isn’t peeling from the oppressive moisture.
The clouds often pull in storms from the ocean and toss them here. There’s nothing cleansing about the rain, though. It simply dumps back into the sea that fed it, reeking of fish while it floods the muddy streets.
