I know this hurts (it was meant to); ANY

[magnus]

we all carry these things that no one else can see
they hold us down like anchors; they drown us out at sea

He isn’t sure where he is except that he is somewhere. The realization is sudden—the switch from nothingness to something a sear alongside the back of his lungs. For so long (years, decades, more even), he had gone without breathing; for so long, he had simply drifted in the waters. To breathe again was both ecstasy and agony, his battered lungs inflating with a gasp as the cold air flooded his nostrils. But he does not understand. Not yet. His limbs are weak, useless, and all he recognizes is the pain in his chest and the burning in his eyes. He is moving, but it is dark; he is being tossed, but he does not understand that either.

Saltwater pours into his open mouth and he is choking, shaking his handsome head, the tendrils of his mane roped and tangled around his eyes and down his neck. Suddenly, his mind registers the ocean, the abstract idea of it forming and triggering whatever instinctual drive had been burrowed in the back of his dead subconscious. He latches onto the instinct, white-knuckling onto the only thing that was clear: I need to survive. Lax limbs become active as he kicks himself upward, thrashing against the tide, fighting for air that seems more and more precious as the waves violently throw him side to side.

It seems like hours, but is only minutes until his hooves find purchase on the sand and he is staggering forward and then falling on his knees. Coughing, he rests his head on bended leg, breathing deeply of the air that was simultaneously both foreign and nostalgic. What happened to me? He finally manages to string his thoughts together, the formless emotions beginning to solidify. The beach beneath him causes his belly to stir, and he feels bile against the back of his throat; something was wrong.

Where am I?

Lifting his head, he struggles to clear his vision. Struggles to make sense of decades of nothing. He can feel his bones shake within him, and there is an ache that threatens to drown him more surely than the storming, tempestuous ocean. It hits him like a punch to the gut. The stallion rising above him. The scream that stripped his throat raw and…something else, something important, but it is taken from him quickly, as if his mind could not handle holding it for too long. As if the memory was so precious, so sharp-edged that looking at it was like looking at the sun. Still, he struggles to recollect.

There are more flashes, his body reacting as if the fight was in the present and not decades ago. He can feel the kicks and the bruises; he can feel the way his life had drained out of him. And then, he is gasping, because he remembers and it is worse than he could have comprehended. He remembers Trashlip, and he remembers the fear, and, oh, he remembers her. Joelle. The terror in her eyes and the way that he had not been able to protect her. He remembers and he burns. He remembers and it is like dying all over again.

Shaking, he forces himself to stand, still not grasping at why he was here—and she wasn’t. Something in him remembers the silence of his death and then a tug; something subtle but tangible. Something that was both beautiful in his unexpectedness but also painful in its existence. More memories flood in snapshots. He remembers a boy, young, his eyes at first hopeful and then frightened. He remembers the anger that had flooded him, blinded him, and the gut-wrenching fear when he had realized what he had done.

He is not sure why he remembers this, but it seems right.
It seems connected although he does not know how.

Wincing, Magnus begins to move, forcing himself to find his way away from the beach and all of its painful memories. His progress is slow and punctuated with long pauses where he fights to catch his breath again or simply ride through the nausea and dizziness. His thoughts are short, bulleted, painful. His death. Her death. It seemed no matter where he looked as if he was surrounded by it, and yet he seems to have beaten it—but not without cost. That much he is sure about although he cannot explain it.

When he finally reaches the meadow, it is midnight and mostly empty, except the stray soul. It has not changed much, if at all, and he cannot decide whether to be comforted or frightened by the fact. So much seems to be the same and yet it is altogether different. The air is alive with the unknown and while he may have been electrified with possibility, he cannot overcome the grief that wracks him. So he leans against a tree and he does what he had never had the chance to do in his life: he mourns.

MAGNUS

once king. once general. once dead.