[open] you and i both know that the ghost is me [any]

[magnus]

you and I both know that the house is haunted
and you and I both know that the ghost is me

It is strange how young he looks when he feels lifetimes old.

Decades have passed since his birth, but he is mostly untouched by them. He carries scars (down his cheek, across his shoulders, ridged along his back), but his body still maintains its youth—the muscles thick and roping, the coat carrying that glint of health. He is handsome in the way of canyons and valleys and open fields: unchanging, stable, melted in the gold of sunshine and earth. It is a surface level handsomeness that belies the churning tides of his internal struggle. Few knew more than the easy, crooked smile that he gave; few knew that the wars he waged internally weighed heavier on him than any physical fight.

Today, though—today, he carries the struggle visibly. His muscles are hard and his posture stiff, gold-flecked eyes stormy as he watches the field before him with clashing bodies and conversations that ebbed and flowed. His focus so intense that he did not notice his son by his side before he was at a stop. When he tears his eyes way from the horizon, his chest tightens and words do not come. Not immediately.

Instead he simply reaches over, bumping the velvet of his nose against his son’s neck, eyes shifting toward the younger colt. The dusk of his coat was undeniable and something softens in Magnus as he looks upon what he can only assume is his grandson. “Fiero,” Magnus finally manages, wrestling the demons in his chest back away where they could not hurt—could not lash out. “I…” he imagines trying to explain where he went, the months suspended in darkness, this disembodied whispers telling him he had to be there, and he gives up. There was no way to explain that. “Who is this little guy?” he shifts, neck craning to see Fang.

“My name is Magnus.”

I hope that I will not disappoint you too.

MAGNUS

once general. once lord. once king.