He wakes with clouds in his head.
All he remembers is the mist, how it ringed the pines like a promise of forever. The jutting of the stone just beyond, stone that had hemmed in wars and guarded lives (how easily their defenses all came down in the end, history littered at their feet). All he can see is a flash of gold before the kaleidoscope of browns, greens, reds.
He doesn’t remember anything afterwards. Walter wakes with his clouds and his stretching, wracking brain and it is all right. She hadn’t been there, at least. She had been gone so long that it meant little and less to him that the world was ending. Hours later, when he comes down from the mountain, he is still alone.
Nothing has changed.
The meadow hasn’t, anyway. The press of too many bodies trampling too little earth is numbingly familiar (though the fact that there are even more horses here is not lost on him – what happens when their too few resources dry up?) The hurried and hushed conversations are the same (though there are loud ones, too; panic and pain lace too many words). His ears swivel to take them in but his eyes never follow; he’s not really listening, anyway.
He ignores the lightness in his step, the way the crisp air finds his ribs rather than his shielding, downy wings. He tries not to focus too long on any of the others; his inability to read emotions leaves him bare are vulnerable. A few of them look at him with lost, hungry eyes and he cannot move away quickly enough. None of them ask for help and he is immeasurably glad. It is impossible to administer aid when understanding is absent. He has nothing to give them.
An empty copse near the back of the common area calls to him. Walter tucks himself in, knowing it will not be only his for long. There are too many of them in too broken of a world. He wonders if he will miss the Chamber but he knows his answer right away. It isn’t the kingdom he will mourn at all, even if it welcomed him and raised him and homed him. He will miss the moonlight streaming through the fog, the flutter of a raven’s wing. He will remember counting the heartbeats under the soil as a boy until he fell asleep. He will hold the image in his memory of her in the inky hours just before dawn, the way the first rays caught on her golden rings (he’ll smell the sap as he pulled away into the darkness of the pines, keeping his watch a secret for one more day, always, until she was gone without the truth).
Walter
come down from the mountain
you have been gone too long