The Land Between Oceans

by Enebris

On days like these, when grey clouds and white snow contend to blot out the sky, my grandmother would tell stories of warmer, brighter times. I may not be an elder yet, but let me tell you a story of my own; a story from years and years ago, when I had ventured into the land between oceans, where the people's hair shone with the color of the sun... [Possible shounen-ai.]

Somewhere to the north, a little south of the permafrost, there are two brothers who tend to their sheep among the reed plains that stretch from sea to sea. Every winter they make their way into the farming towns to shear their flock and sell their wool. Every spring, they head back north to wander the reed fields, tirelessly chasing greener pastures.

For most of the year, the fields are a safe, hospitable place. The wolves rarely travel far from the mountains, at the foot of which the cedar forests are thickest. Beneath the sprawling blue sky, without cover or anywhere to hide, is the territory of docile grazers and their watchful young masters. But, every few years, fickle Mother Nature sends her summer floods, transforming those plains into a sinking swamp, where water-laden boots and the threat of skin rot forces them into the mountains.

One year, the floods were especially bad. The rainclouds seemed without end, rolling one after the other over the open plains. As the skies unleashed their heavy rains, day in and day out, the land between oceans was transformed into an ocean itself. Meanwhile, the young shepherd brothers had found refuge on a small patch of unwooded foothills. But the ground here was composed almost entirely of gravel and hardly any grass could take root here, so further and further up the mountain they were forced to go, searching for spaces where the alpine grasses could grow. The air here was thin and the ground was unstable. Reese, the eldest, would often whirl around in panic if his brother was too quiet.

"Please stay where I can see you, Kai," Reese would plead his younger brother, to which Kai would respond with an earnest nod. For a while, he would grip his brother's sleeve, huddling against his side when the strange calls of birds of prey echoed off the mountains, but the mountain slopes were new to him and his curiosity was just a little bit stronger than his fear and Reese would turn to find that his little brother had wandered off once again.

At night, the howls of wolves dogged them; however, the spooked sheep wouldn't give them a chance to indulge their own fears. The nights were sleepless and the traps and tricks they knew didn't work on the wildlife here; all they had to fill their stomachs were ewe's milk and wild vegetables. It was miserable and even a little terrifying at times, but it was worth it, or so Reese claimed when he recounted the experience to me. After all, if they hadn't fled so far north, venturing so deep into the mountains that they nearly traversed them entirely, then we would never have met.

Well, even with them being so much further north than usual, it was still purely chance that we ever crossed paths. After all, our people rarely ever cross the mountains; they are the southern border that separates our pure, white homeland with the 'lands of seasons and soil'. It was only our need for medicinal ingredients that compelled Avens and I to head north with a sled laden with trading goods, while it was my own lack of a sense of direction that led us into the unwooded foothills of the southern mountains.

It was a thrilling journey for me. Even my adventures among the glaciers during my coming-of-age ceremony paled in comparison. That feeling of defiance that had filled me as I ventured in the far arctic regions of our territory, the dangers of which our mothers had lectured us about, the beauty and sanctity of which we sung of during our festivals under the aurora-that feeling was nothing compared to what I felt in those moments as I ventured into the far southern regions of the unknown. The places that hardly any of us had ever seen, the places no one spoke of, somewhere so strange and mysterious that, as our families and leaders had gathered to see us off, there had been silence. What advice could they have given us, anyways?

Thinking back to that time, I wonder what I had expected to find as I departed my familiar homeland. I have no doubts that my imagination must have run wild. If I had encountered giants or dragons or fortresses that floated in the sky, I probably wouldn't have been surprised at all. As we trekked up the gravelly hills and negotiated the craggy mountainside, perhaps I was even disappointed to find that there were no golems or dwarves to be found. What I hadn't expected, however, was that, as we slipped into a wide-mouthed cave to make camp for the night, we'd find ourselves face to face with two golden-haired boys, huddling against the far wall away from the biting wind, staring at us with wide, fearful eyes as if we were a pair of wolves ready to drag them into the forest below.

At the time it was a setback, a bother, in addition to the detour that we had to take due to my own mistakes. It didn't matter to me who these people were and what they were doing here. I even laughed at how pitiful and scared they looked. I wish that I could take it back, take back all of it, yet, despite how juvenile and insensitive I had been, Reese had tilted his head up at us and given us a weak but earnest smile.