DIGGER, LISTENER, RUNNER
PRINCE WITH THE SWIFT WARNING
PRINCE WITH THE SWIFT WARNING
He wakes up sweaty and heaving in distress, as he has so many mornings after the…
Ahhh. But, why think about that now? He supposes it does no good to dwell on the past—(save for the past that dangles, thumping his chest as he goes, around his neck. That he keeps like a second heartbeat, unwilling or unable to disentangle from it.)
—it’s also bloody hard to forget when it replays itself, night after night, as if his memory has skipped and become suspended in one moment—a flash of light, the nasally screech of an old windbag, with no sense of humor or fun whatsoever.
It takes a moment for the adrenaline to wear thin in his blood, his breath steadying, his heartbeat falling into its normal—if somewhat over-quick—rhythm. This time, his nightmare has not left him stranded in late-eve, condemned to wander the dark where he finds it almost impossible not to fall into the suck of his quagmire-mind. Dawn comes, mauve and salmon-pink, and at least he can stand—shaking the sand and thin droplets of dew from his bushy tail—and face the day. And the desert.
The endless, hellish desert he had wandered into sometime yesterday, for time seems to melt into one long, hot meander here...
And then, failed miserably to wander out of.
“Yes, well... Still here,” he mutters to himself, squinting across the sea of shifting, strangely-formed dunes, glittering in the rising sun. He’d like to say it has its charms, but somehow, he has never been able to shake off the need for hidey-holes and good cover. Mors offers none of that—on all sides, he is beset upon by nothing but air baking away, cooler now in the reprieve of early day. Above, vultures circle and swoop, eyes open for whatever may have come to an untimely end during the night.
The once-rabbit-prince, now soon-to-be-meal, sighs. By way of habit, he dips his grey chin to his chest to feel for the skull-keepsake, and begins his wander in the Black Rabbit’s arms all over again.
IMAGE
