[P] God went North.

[Raymond]

***

One horse amongst the flurry of frightened activity did not retreat from Ruth's treacherous shadow. One horse stood fast, severe where once he had been soft, standing before the hospital entryway like an accuser as Raymond oversaw the delivery of his precious cargo. As Ruth settled and a swarm of nameless faceless others secured the queen, spiriting her away into the bowels of the hospital, the red stallion glanced at the indignant gull with silent understanding.

A brief respite fell when all had been cleared away, leaving only the dark stain on the ground where Florentine had been delivered and the bone-rattling rumble of Ruth's breaths as she curled her siegebreaking tail around herself.

Then, What happened?

Asterion's voice accused as much as the rest of him, but Raymond's face did not change. He was all iron and undertow, standing squarely in a place Asterion's words couldn't quite reach: a place full of cut throats and burning histories, where all dreams come to die.

"The only thing you can expect to happen when you refuse to deal with reality on reality's terms," he replied almost instructively, his own anger embedded like barbs in a voice that even now bespoke confidence and command.

Inside, he seethed. Better to have lived and died with the memory of Ruth's brief existence that to be reunited with the mockery that the rift had made of her flesh. Better to miss her daily than to become steward to this abomination that plays so well at felinity between the quaking echoes of her footsteps. Better for Ruth to have died that day than to have spent a thousand years like this.

Deathstalker.

Destroyer of worlds.

And, thanks to the inexhaustible mercy of Florentine, he could have only this - and she her agony.

He wrinkled his brow sourly. "Honestly, it's a shame I can't even enjoy the irony of the situation." Were it not for Ruth, Florentine would be dead. Were it not for Ruth, Florentine wouldn't have been in danger at all. So fall the cards of the universe in their uncaring relentlessness.

***

Raymond
And at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
When the man comes around.

@Asterion