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Sasappis sits with Thorfinn by the lake. They watch the water lapping at the sand. The sun is low in the sky, but not yet setting. Sass stares down at their shoes, settled in the grains without making a mark there. Thor’s are heavy and large, while Sass compares rather daintily. He can hear his people in the distance. Shouting. Gun fire. The grate of a screaming horse.
Breathing in, he looks up at the sun. It doesn’t hurt his eyes. It doesn’t leave that glare of burned in light in his retinas like it did when he was alive.
Sass absently reaches for the feather in his hair. Thor shifts his weight beside him, the musical clanking of metal ax against metal shield. The shift of air creates a wave of that fishy smell Thor tends to carry. Sass wrinkles his nose, rubbing it under the musty old smell of smoke that resides in his own sleeves.
There’s a rustle of leaves and branches that turns both their heads. They watch as two Lenape men make a run out of the trees, heading for the field, wielding large spere heads. Thor looks at Sass. Sass looks back. He shakes his head no.
Thorfinn looks ahead at the water again. Sass looks after the field, towards the noise. There’s so much commotion he loses sight of the two men as soon as they fade into the smoke and the crowds. Something catches his eyes. He squints to make it out. Gun fire has hit his father. Gun fire has knocked him off the back of his horse. His arms flail after his fall.
Sasappis stands, and Thorfinn is quick to do the same. He moves towards it all then, and Thorfinn follows without hesitation. They run.
They reach the scene. Sass falls to his knees amongst the chaos. His father is panting. There is a hole in his chest. It bleeds furiously, the edges seared from heat and force. His father is blinking at him, recognition flickers across his face.
Sass shakes his head, more insistently, hardly able to see past the welling tears. Thorfinn hoovers over the scene, watching. The chaos continues around them, gun shots, fallen men, blood. Sass tries to touch his father’s face, but his hand fades past it, as if it’s nothing but an illusion.
Warmth. Stillness. Silence. Sass watches his father’s sprit rise over it all. Thor holds his shoulders as Sasappis stands, his hands reaching. His father smiles. And then he is gone. And the noise comes back. The chaos and the cold come back.
Sasappis and Thorfinn return to the edge of the lake. They sit side by side, watching the sun set. Listening to the gun fire, shouting, fighting, the water lapping. Sasappis breaths in the smell of urine and fish and smoke. He wipes his eyes.
Thorfinn leans in. Sass, despite the strong smells, rests his head against hard leathers, and soft furs. Thorfinn puts an arm around his shoulders.