When the darkness receded his mouth was full of sand, his eyelids crusted with it, his ears so full that the boom and rush of the tide rumbled soft as distant thunder instead of the crash that he could feel in the trembling earth beneath his shoulder and ribs. Nothing screamed of urgency, his pale eyes flickered open, lazy, sleepy, and alighted on, well, nothing. Billows of soft green-grey sighed past, leaving salt on his lips and reminding him, queerly, of blood in his mouth.
A strange thing, that.
He blinked, suddenly unsettled, and rolled sternally, his joints groaning beneath him as his weight shifted upright. The pressure in them was strange, flesh too soft, bones too brittle. He felt sea-rotten, salt-cured, like driftwood left on the beach, his thoughts no more than scratching sandfleas, digging themselves deeper and deeper when he tried to grasp at them and see what they were made of. He stopped trying. Instead, the stallion lifted his strange body up onto its creaking limbs and staggered numbly towards the dark water where further from the shore something even darker yet rose up, leviathan-high, and called him to service.
And what answer could he give? Words died somewhere between breathless lungs and blackened tongue. He could do no more than nod his heartless and sluggish assent. Yes, yes, he knew this game, though the memories still evaded him. It was something deeper than thinking; some instinct, some muscle memory, that dredged him out of his deep slumber at the ancient call to arms. The cacophony of its voices stung him, but he could not remember why.
"Welcome back."
Welcome; to where? From where? The stallion's fine head tipped to the side with a quiet, dry, snap, his gaze pulled back from the crowned entity to slide against the blurred landscape. He would know this shore, if he had been on it before, he is certain of it. And yet, he could not say where else he might have been. A hollow sound, like wood under hooves, echoed in his still-clogged ears; a child's laugh, a stallion's baritone bugling, and always, always, the lapping water. Meaningless.
"Would you like to play a game?"
His stilled heart shuddered in its quiet cage, sending him back to his knees.
yes
i am here
Not real thoughts, not real words, he was not yet capable of either thing, but he was capable of obeisance. It was, in truth, all he had left, though it rankled some small and nameless thing in his rotted mind. Perhaps, once, he was not someone who followed instructions well. That half glimmer of understanding felt real, if not whole. It was not everything. His attention returned to the wine-dark demon then, still bowed, still weak, his chest a growing ache bleeding slowly into his belly, his feet, his grey and bloodless lips.
"Y..." He gasped, the air a fire in his throat "...es."
A strange thing, that.
He blinked, suddenly unsettled, and rolled sternally, his joints groaning beneath him as his weight shifted upright. The pressure in them was strange, flesh too soft, bones too brittle. He felt sea-rotten, salt-cured, like driftwood left on the beach, his thoughts no more than scratching sandfleas, digging themselves deeper and deeper when he tried to grasp at them and see what they were made of. He stopped trying. Instead, the stallion lifted his strange body up onto its creaking limbs and staggered numbly towards the dark water where further from the shore something even darker yet rose up, leviathan-high, and called him to service.
And what answer could he give? Words died somewhere between breathless lungs and blackened tongue. He could do no more than nod his heartless and sluggish assent. Yes, yes, he knew this game, though the memories still evaded him. It was something deeper than thinking; some instinct, some muscle memory, that dredged him out of his deep slumber at the ancient call to arms. The cacophony of its voices stung him, but he could not remember why.
"Welcome back."
Welcome; to where? From where? The stallion's fine head tipped to the side with a quiet, dry, snap, his gaze pulled back from the crowned entity to slide against the blurred landscape. He would know this shore, if he had been on it before, he is certain of it. And yet, he could not say where else he might have been. A hollow sound, like wood under hooves, echoed in his still-clogged ears; a child's laugh, a stallion's baritone bugling, and always, always, the lapping water. Meaningless.
"Would you like to play a game?"
His stilled heart shuddered in its quiet cage, sending him back to his knees.
yes
i am here
Not real thoughts, not real words, he was not yet capable of either thing, but he was capable of obeisance. It was, in truth, all he had left, though it rankled some small and nameless thing in his rotted mind. Perhaps, once, he was not someone who followed instructions well. That half glimmer of understanding felt real, if not whole. It was not everything. His attention returned to the wine-dark demon then, still bowed, still weak, his chest a growing ache bleeding slowly into his belly, his feet, his grey and bloodless lips.
"Y..." He gasped, the air a fire in his throat "...es."