[open] this crooked posture is all you’ve ever known; any

[Fyr]

I'll settle for the ghost of you.

Like a moth to a flame, he can’t help himself. Even against his better judgement, he finds himself here. Over and over again, a sick cycle that he can’t seem to break even if it costs him his sanity and oh, how it wants to shatter. How weak his mind feels against the constant battering of souls at the gates, the unrelenting pounding that makes the edges of his vision blur.

And yet, he still comes like a thing possessed. Certain that he would find something here of importance and no longer caring what exactly that might be or look like. It doesn’t even seem to matter if it holds relevance to the search of Aela or the other lost Southerners anymore. That dark little voice that wraps around his mind and constricts his heart in his chest seems more persistent now. Reminding him of that one word that he can never outrun, can never escape, the true moniker his birth mother had given him.

Terrible, terrible, terrible.

A mantra that repeats itself like the steady beat of a heavy drum, a death knoll that won’t stop keening. All of Aela’s teachings and confidence that she had so carefully instilled in him seem to grow weaker in this place, faint memories that can’t compare to the strong hold these stones seem to have on him. For a moment, he swears he sees familiar transparent claws that flash in his head, so similar to the ones that had ravaged his pale dappled coat until he had been touched by an angel. It’s that thought that manages to bring a small spell of peace to soothe his throbbing temples, enough so that he catches a flash of gold from the corner of a strange yellow eye.

There is no hesitance in the flames he sends to hopefully circle around the thing of gold, a stallion of similar age he comes to find when he steps through his ring of fire, not even thinking twice that he’s treating a stranger like a hostage. The little voice purrs with malicious approval but he ignores that too, wrapped up in the hope that he had finally found what he was suppose to find here.

One mistake stares at another mistake until one tilts his pale golden head, flames flickering in the reflection of his feral eyes as he discovers something familiar in the golden ones of the other. “Have we met before?”

FYR

Photo by Little Willow Art

@prime