-1Disclaimer thingy: Ehem, I do not own Ico or Yorda bla bla bla, BUT Lisia and Ivan are all mine to do with as I please. So there! … .

Comment, please? O.o no one ever does --

The Unlikely Pair

Ivan surveyed the land around him- now he didn’t know what to do. He could turn around and lose himself in the woods, but he was unfamiliar with it, and weary from the first trip. They fed him little and slept sparingly. He would have to be lucky to get out of the woods and back to the beach they first landed on- he was not a lucky guy. Even if he got back to the boat, where would he go to, alone he couldn’t sail the ship even. He was unwelcome in his own land, they would kill him if they found him again. No matter how good he may be, he could not fight a whole village. There was no way.

He finally came to a decision, maybe there was life in those ruins just past the cliff, he could scale it no problem. There may be something beyond them even, a place that would be ignorant to his curse. He settled on that decision and quickly latched himself onto the rock wall, wanting to be out of the shelter of the trees. Too much closure and unfamiliar greenery, this was not the desert he knew. The hard rock under his hand bit into his flesh uncomfortable, nothing like the soft warm sand… nothing at all like it. But that water below him was much less welcoming than the hug of the rocks. That castle though, with its ruins and dust, standing half precariously on the ocean, that would be closer to home than these woods.

Rocks slid below his feet and he clumsily grasped onto the largest hand holds he could find, gritting his teeth as his lower body slammed into the roughly carved rock. He was going to take more cuts away from his battle with a boulder than with three armed men. There was one thing he could say for the rock wall though, it seemed to always be moving under his feet, the ledge crumbling off with every step he took- he probably wasn’t getting across again. The constant movement it made seemed like sand, shifting under his feet with every step, bending to the shape of his foot. He was becoming dangerously home-sick, yet he missed no one. Not his parents who exiled him, they didn’t him, they just made him live on his own, without so much as acknowledgment of his existence. Not the village that captured him in the middle of a cool desert night. And especially not the friend, the boy he saved out in the desert, the same one that alerted the villagers to his camp miles out.

Ivan chanced a look over, he only had a couple yards left, he would make it. The wind seemed to be hurrying up, but curiously on his side. He remembered always having to fight the wind, always in the desert it went against him, and his eyes became red from the sand. Here, the wind was at his side, at his back, pressing him into the wall viciously, but keeping him from falling ungracefully into the rolling ocean that called his name with every beat. A curious land… he attached himself to the last hand hold and propelled the rest of his body to the ledge, stumbling onto sturdy land with one last breath of the wind. He grunted and pulled himself up, looking around him quickly. Had I imagined it?

He was sure, when he first looked over to this side of the land, there was someone here- a girl he thought. There undoubtedly was life here if he was correct. “ Hello!” he called out, met only by an eerie silence of despair. Had he been seeing things? No, from behind a pile of rocks stepped a gorgeous, frail girl wearing a deeply ebony dress that seemed to blend in with the wild hair atop her head. She looked at him intently curious with blue eyes that were relentless in their innocence. She was surely the girl he saw earlier. Would she know where the next village was? The next desert even? Did she come from a village just on the other side of that desolate castle? Ivan bit his tongue to hold off the questions, he didn’t want to overwhelm her in the least.