WHAT IT MUST BE LIKE TO BE GENTLE
to reach out and not want to hurt
to reach out and not want to hurt
A hot, dry wind buffets him, offering him little comfort in the unrelenting heat of the desert. He aches all over, still recovering from his last Change, and his throat is raw from breathing dust and screaming for the last week and a half. The journey, the Change - it had all gone wrong, so terribly wrong, and he wept still, tears dripping like tiny diamonds into the sand before a dusty hoof buries them. The bloodscent clings with fervor to his unwashed pelt and his guilt festers, familiar, like an open wound in his chest. The taste of blood - the taste, the taste! - it haunts him, choking him, had punctured his lungs in the night with pleasure and so much pain. Sam had never been a killer, but thoughts … thoughts had always been there, dark desires, things he had believed he had put to rest. Someone had dug up, extracted, injected, and forced it out of him so many moons ago,and now he had become someone - something - he hardly recognized. This wouldn’t be his last victim, either. The Wolf was waiting beneath his sad, sorry face even now, unleashed only when the moon sang its soft, tragic song to the beat of his own heart, to the tune of his own quiet plea - not again, oh gods not again, why, why this, I am good, I am good, believe me! The moon only ever shone back, impassive. The moon did not believe him. The moon knew he was a murderer, a monster, and his heart swelled like an ocean full of regrets and lost memories.
He longed for a home, but he would never - could never - have that again. The closest he had ever come to the ignorant bliss of domestic life was when he lived together with Mathias and Elysium, and they were gone now. He had tried - still tries, some furious nights spent alone in the library, sketching on vellum Mattie's likeness, making sure to emphasize his scowl, fantasizing about posting his makeshift missing persons poster but never having the courage to do it. Sam is alone, so very, very alone, and it shows. There is a dullness to his burning eyes, and when he trips on something he isn't expecting, he is slow to recover. What is the point of going on like this? Is a pointless existence worth the torture of his slowly decaying heart? He has found no other survivors of his homeland, has found no others with his … illness. They call it magic here. He wonders what he will do if there are no more. The last born of his line, rejected since birth, abandoned by his family, now afflicted with something that made it impossible to be close to anything. Only Mathias, his long lost unrequited love, could ever understand a pain like that, and he hurt in every inch of his sinner's soul for him, more tears welling on his wet lashes as he pulls himself to his feet. As he raises his head, an apparition greets him, black, white, scarred, skinny. But that voice. If every land he had ever lived in was burned to dust and he was stripped completely of memory, he would still know that voice. Only he could wield his true name, his soldier’s name, with such unforgiving venom, ringing in his ears as the sword of his next words sang from its sheath and pierced his broken heart. This is not the Mattie of his memory: muscular, roguishly handsome, speaking with the devil's tongue and constantly playing with fire to keep his own from going out. This Mattie was a wraith, a husk. They mirrored each other in their bleak disrepair, and he felt his breath stolen for a fleeting moment before reality hit him.
Mattie claims he is a figment, and isn't that something? A ghost that thinks he isn't real. After so many long years, the desert taunts him now with this vision, what he wants most in the world so close in front of him and yet, so absolutely far away. A wretched sound comes from him, somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and the taller stallion shakes his head. "You wouldn't want me if I was," he replies, voice hoarse. It is logic that brings these words forth from his cracked ebony lips. Sam had never had a chance to find him after escaping his tormentors, he never had a chance to say goodbye before they swept him away. This, in the silver snake eye of the bastard prince, was an unforgivable sin. He would find no redemption from ethereal beings, yet still he finds himself yearning to reach out, to touch. His eyes are watery but they drink in every inch of him like a thirsty man that finds an oasis. Ah, but there would be no oasis here for them. Only the excruciating pain of reality, the rolling gut full of the love that remained for someone that would never love him again. "It's okay," he forces out, a choked whisper. "I understand. I always have, haven't I?" Again, a shake of his head. He can hardly bear to look at him like this, scraggly and rough clearly from the arid climate, the lack of resources available. "Oh Mattie …" Sam might have lost some muscle, but he had never been able to count Mattie's ribs before. A crack in the wall weakens the structure, and he takes the weight off of a hoof tentatively, unsure if he should get closer - afraid his vision will shatter, fragments of glass that would pierce his broken, bleeding heart to the tender core that he cannot afford to make vulnerable.
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