Outcasts 2: Arise

Citlara crept to the edge of the stream; a little pool had formed from the eddies of the current, and she looked down at her reflection. Was this what she had always looked like? She couldn't remember. Long dark hair, dyed greenish in the cavelight, plastered across her face and down her back. Sharply peaked eyebrows over tilted brown eyes. Small dark beauty spots on her neck and shoulders. Citlara looked at her hands, and then got to her feet; the man on the ground nearby drew in a shuddering breath, and she went to him, taking one of his hands in hers.

"Get up. It's cold. We cannot remain stationary."

His eyes opened, wandered, focussed. He stared up at her face. Though they were obviously of a kind, he showed marked dissimilarities to Citlara, not the least of which was his greater height. His eyes slanted downward; his nose was straighter; his cheekbones stood out as starkly as if chiseled from stone. He was beautiful, and Citlara desperately hoped to recognise something familiar about his face: but it remained the face of a stranger.

"What—what is this place?" he asked, in a voice hoarse from long silence. "Who are you?"

"I don't know where we are. I don't know how we got here. I know only my name—Citlara—and that if we do not move around to get feeling back in our arms and legs, we will slowly die of the cold."

He sat up, wiping the wet hair from his face with both hands. For a long moment, he stared out across the river into the dark distance; then he whispered, "I cannot remember ever having been so cold. I—don't think I ever have been."

"It is why we must move around and dry off," Citlara insisted, taking his hand again and pulling. He slowly got to his feet, and then looked down at her, puzzled.

"Who are you?"

"I don't know."

"How can you not know who you are?"

"I know my name—Citlara. That's all. Who are you?"

He was taken aback by that, and paused, glancing around. "I…I cannot remember."

"Do you know your name?"

He thought for a moment, then nodded. "I am Loki. But that is all I remember."

Citlara turned round, sweeping her wet hair back over her shoulders. The waterfall-fed river—had it washed them up on the stone shore here?—flowed placidly on into a lake whose waters stretched away into blackness. The cave they were in was vaster than she had initially thought; more nebulae of the glowing fungus on the ceiling illumined deep blue patches of water, and what must be islands out in the lake. One such island appeared to hold the ruins of crystalline structures.

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