Help me out before I drown
Save me now before I give up
He had expected more resistance when he had entered into Sylva. From the looks Oceane had given him regarding Sabra and the stories he had heard about the autumn land (the dark memories he personally held of the place) he had expected to find Beqanna’s bottom-feeders. A motley crew of psychopaths, murderers, and narcissists. But that’s not what he had found at all.
The woods had been strangely silent, the only sound was the soft rustling of burnt red and yellow leaves above him as they brushed against each other in the chilly breeze. Empty, no matter where he had looked. It had been more than easy to take up the mantle in Sabra’s absence, much to Oceane’s delight. He, however, still had misgivings but he kept them to himself. His twilight partner had her hands full already and this was a way to ease her mind, by keeping Sylva in the grasp of someone she could trust. He wonders what Magnus would make of him now, what he would say seeing his troubled son ruling a territory. Would he be proud? Or would Ledger crumble beneath the weight of it all like his sire had so many times before?
She could trust him, of that there was no doubt. However, he wanders his new “home” and sees only shadows where there should be light. He misses the hidden cove in Loess, he misses the few friends he had made there, he misses his children. Most of all, he misses her. It’s not the same as it had been before, when they had been able to curl up into each other every night in their cave. He feels their distance like a heavy brick on his heart and his mental health begins to wane with each sleepless night he spends in the woods, each night where he feels her absence like a physical wound carved into him where she would usually be.
Temporary, she had said. It would all be temporary.
It’s been well over a year since he had stepped foot in the meadow, in the land he had once been convinced he would never leave. There are shattered memories here as well, lurking just out of his periphery, but the presence of others does much to ease the loneliness that had followed him through fiery limbs and bent trees. The old Ledger would have kept to himself, would have simply observed from afar from beneath the shaded safety of a wide oak.
But he isn’t that broken anymore.
So he approaches the horse nearest to him, warmth reflecting in his gold-speckled eye as he looks at the other with a small smile. “Hey. What’s that you’re up to?” He asks with genuine interest, casting his one-eyed gaze over whatever he had caught the other one doing.
Ledger