Tor woke to pain.
The cramps shot along his back, through his limbs, down to his fingers and toes, locking him into a fetal tuck.
A familiar sensation, sneaking up on him every winter
Damned July rains.
You have chronic damage to the bones, the doctors had said. Microbubbles in the bloodstream, pitting them over and over again with every forced ascent and descent at speed, killing the joints bit by bit.
Getting old.
But the benefit of getting old is that the pain becomes familiar. Not an old friend, perhaps, but a touchstone to the universe.
He flexed his hand, feeling the pain shoot back across his forearm in a pyrotechnic display across his nerves, breaking the spasm.
Tor paused, giving the pain time to subside, as the sun rose across the bay and stabbed weak winter light in through his bay window. Then he reached out and closed his hands around the pommel of his walking stick, drawing on the essence of metal deep within it, and then drawing through it to ground himself into the iron girders that made up the skeleton of the hotel, pouring the pain out into the metal and pulling endurance into himself.
The core pain didn’t fade; the doctors had warned him that it never would. But the spasms went away.
And… good morning, world.
Loading comments...