The churn of the populace has dwindled to a steady trickle. Somewhere the last few shops hung in candles and gold fabric are waiting out the end of the season, though everyone else has boxed their decorations and tucked them away for the next celebration. At long last, Denocte lets out a breath - no more strangers, no more masks, no more of the itch at the back of their neck that says fear, fear, fear in an endless loop. 

Michael is among the first to leave, tired of ghosts and drinks and the roar of the crowd (loud like the ocean, loud like thunder, loud like words spoken in an empty room) and nobody watches him go.
-
Here we are, says his chest, in the mountains again. Here we are in the tall pines pocked every hundred meters or so with the reds and yellows of deciduous autumn. Here we are in the early morning fog that clings to the canopy and the air so cold it hurts to breathe. 

Michael likes it here. 
He likes that he can think.

Two days after the end of the festival Michael is winding through the woods - the timberline is about a hundred yards uphill and the cold wind blowing down the mountain has Michael shielding his face with his scarf, blue and shimmering as it slaps at his cheeks. Below the whole of Denocte is spread against the sea, smudged in all the colors of an earth bedding down before winter.

It starts to occur to Michael that he can't remember the last time he felt truly warm, that there was not some breath of this mountain wind in him, circling endlessly because it cannot escape. He wonders if he will ever feel warm again.

He wonders if he will ever feel anything, again.

Michael frowns. The wind flaps his scarf against his cheeks and he does not move. The trees creak with its blustering and he does not move. Only a shape, barely visible downwind, climbing the narrow path, draws his attention. It is a large type, hulking and solemn. Somewhere, the sun is crawling ever closer to noon. Michael assumes this shape is a soldier on rounds.

"Hello," he calls, "Are you headed this way?"
He cannot telll if the answer he wants is yes, or no.

It was not easy to learn, but Michael has come to understand that everything is suffering - that there is an undercurrent of pain that runs through the veins of the earth. Eleven - and it hurts to think the name, but there it is, somehow - would say he was cynical. She would perhaps think we was selfish; that he is turning the world to a soft and sad thing because he cannot understand anything that is not.

Maybe she's right.

And Michael does want to die. It is a cold rock settled at the bottom of the deep lake of his heart, silt-covered and tucked away. He has forgotten this over centuries of doing the opposite (persisting, in spite of his efforts, in spite of the roiling black clouds of fate) but it sits in him still.

It occurs to him, suddenly and without warning, there on the mountainside in the company of this white horse, that he will. A year has come and gone and he is sure that he is so tired because now, at last, he is aging. The slow decay of being alive.

And suddenly he doesn't want to die at all.

Michael smiles, and nods, and while it is brittle it is genuine. "Toro, I'm Michael. I'm from here."

And up they go, until the trees break into rock piled on rock, until the trail is edged on either side by open air or alpine meadow that slants toward Denocte, laid out before them by a map. Michael stops to catch his breath. Michael turns.

His eyes are pale, angled toward the sun - even squinting, even so desperately tired. 
"I must know, do you come here often?" he asks, and he can hear his own thin smile in it. "And also, why?"

It's rare that anyone likes his questions.
Michael likes to pry - he likes to pull things apart, pick at the pieces that hurt and pull back the dead skin to see what's inside: blood, and more blood, and pain. Michael says, here is your suffering, and I will sit in it with you. Michael says, you don't have to let it go now, but you have to let it go eventually. He does this while smiling like buttermilk and he does this bent under the weight of his own heavy heart.

The wind howls down the mountain. Michael has to tilt his head to keep the scarf out of his eyes. He has stepped into some part of Toro that not many get to see and he has this distinct feeling that he has done something wrong - the tight-chested panic of standing on sacred ground. The leering eyes of the pious.

They are staring at each other and it is far too long before either averts their eyes. It is Michael first, matching Toro's empty laughter with some of his own, but breathless. When he laughs it sounds like apple cider.

"I think I live here?" And because he is laughing already he keeps on laughing. It echoes off the rock and bounces down the mountainside with the wind. "I think we're a lot alike. I'm not sure that's good for me." But he smiles anyway, and it is not unkind.

As if to say, anyway, Michael take one last deep breath, then turns to continue up the mountain. He thinks of a dragon and a golden cage and what it meant to fly. He hopes he never feels like flying again. The golden horse says over his shoulder, barely even turning his head, "So, why are you here now?"

If Toro had asked, Michael would have said, no.
No, there is nothing wrong with you. No, it was not an insult. No, I could never say anything like that with ill-intent. No, I cannot usually say anything at all.

But Toro doesn't ask, and it never crosses Michael's mind that there's a beast at his back, a thing that could crush him if he wanted. If he wanted. All that's up here on the mountain is two drowning boys and the things they don't say.

And the things they do.

If he didn't have this distinct feeling of walking on graves, of his hands stained from digging in holy dirt, he might not have felt the silence in him, an arc of electricity that crackled from Toro to Michael and back again. When all he can hear is the crunching of rock underfoot and the steady keen of the wind each step is a needle in his skin, and by the time Toro speaks he is all but prickling with anticipation.

Oh, I'm just in town, Toro says. Oh, I want to die--and this is paraphrased--and here you are in the ringing church bells and the stern eyes of priests, and they are glaring at you. You've done something terrible, dug up something terrible, and now you can't put it back.

Michael wants to stop but he keeps walking because he's sure he'll die if he doesn't. It's the only way this can go.

"I don't think thin air is good for the brain." he says, but what does he know, because they're above the tree line and Toro's "good air" is making Michael dizzy or else something else is making him dizzy, and the gold horse doesn't want to touch it, doesn't want to even look at it. Here the path carves itself into the mountain, tucked between ridges, walled in on either side by towering rock. Here he stops to catch his breath again, though he can't tell if the thin air or the fist around his heart is why he feels so breathless.

Michael turns to Toro. His scarf flaps noisily in the wind. He cannot hear anything but his blood in his ears.
Kidding, Toro says. Just kidding. And Michael, after another, shorter moment of silence--a moment in which Michael is measuring Toro with some strange mixture of a bleak but knowing smile--says, "Of course you are."

And then, "Do you want to go back?"