Honey, I'm home. Nayl

[Stillwater]

Stillwater

He'd always fed at night, kept himself concealed within the depths of darkness. It was not just that he was a loner. It was that he was a danger. Out of mutual respect alone, he'd secluded himself from the rest of them, chosen not to partake in what came so easily to him. What was made so available to him. But she was gone now. Her stench soured and stale. Their protection had abandoned them. A slow grin stretched his black lips.

For a brief time, also out of his misplaced respect for their weak queen, he'd attempted life among the meadow scum. There were caves there, if they could be called such. Shallow, pathetic scoops from the earth, not at all deep enough for the darkness his mother had raised him to take rest in. It lacked the sweet fragrance of this coast. The water here was cleaner, crisper, smoother. It was his home. It was his ocean. He'd never again have to feel the filthy sea of the meadow's coast painting his slick coat in it's thick muck. And he never again had to do it by night.

Now. He walked in by broad daylight, the bright sun soaking into his colorless coat, blacker still than the darkest of demons. He returned to his home. Not a soul stirred in the dead landscape. Plantlife still thrived, overcame the areas that had once sported grazing bodies of horses. It was overgrown, untended. Wild and abandoned. And his for the taking.

It was perfect.

He stood on a familiar hill, near his cliffs. It was so strange to see it by day, to be on it by day. His chest rumbled at this turn of events, wicked laughter spilling out of him. He didn't even care how loud it sounded to his ears so used to the quiet dribbling of a leaky cavern. No one was around to hear it anyway. So he laughed. He did whatever the hell he wanted.

At last, he was home again.