if we turn back time; any

[magnus]

Tonight, like so many other nights, Magnus ran.

He rose from his fitful slumber, the moon still hanging heavily in the sky and turned his golden head toward the border. His heart beat impatiently against his ribs and his emotions stirred restlessly, the darkest parts of him reaching out and clawing for purchase against the corners of his mind. Agitated, he shook himself, dust billowing outward and into the sky, and he broke into a trot. His leggy pace carried him quickly over the tendrils of magma as they crossed over the land, and past the slumbering bodies of his fellow residents. When he splashed across the water that marked their border, he did not look back.

Instead he tucked his head into his chest, rocked back ever so slightly and then rocketed forward, the power of the move surprising him. The silver light of the moon guided him as his hooves beat heavily against the abandoned trail. There was none out so late, not on the way from Tephra to the more common lands, and he was grateful for the solitude. He kicked back, expending the excess energy, the demons that fought him for attention. He snarled, memories rising within him like flames and settling like ash.

No, tonight, he would not think of them—could not think of him.

He ran until he saw the edges of the meadow, but he was not ready to stop yet and so he skirted around it. He continued on his tear until the ground became littered with needles, until the trees began to crowd in, until the dappled light of the moon winked in and out of existence between them. And then, finally, in this solitude, he came to a stop. The dusk of his coat was darkened to bronze, and he greedily gulped in the air as he tipped his head back to look at the canopy of stars flung out above him. Chest heaving, that is how he remained, unable to outrun the memories that now played out before him, all he had lost and all he had destroy writ in the constellations that swirled and collided above him in all of their splendor.

out of the blue out into the loneliest place that you'll ever know
I carried the world just as far as I could but the damage had taken its toll