the air is cold, the night is long
I feel like I might fade into the dawn
Fade until I'm gone
I feel like I might fade into the dawn
Fade until I'm gone
Grey leaves the strange, glowing pool behind him, and yet still it seems to cling to him. The edges of his vision distort and blur, creating strange silhouettes and shapes that are not really there when he turns to look at them head on. The magic in this world has looked inside him and seen what he always knew was there: cowardice, failure. Disappointment. The strange magic, hot and bright as the sun had seen these things about him, seen who he truly was, and it laid its hands upon him and cursed him for it.
The unicorn walks, and walks, and eventually he leaves behind the tall swaying grasses of the plains and steps beneath the canopy of a forest, where the world is hushed and the night is ever dark. Every blurred shape, looming in the edges of his impaired vision is a danger. A danger that, when he turns to face it, has disappeared back among the trees. Every whisper of wind through the autumn leaves, every rustle in the underbrush, sets his mind on edge and yet he still never comes across any true danger. It is all within his mind conjured by the bane this world had placed on him.
Grey wonders if he will forever walk the world and fear the shadows at the borders of his vision.
He leaves behind the warmth the pool had promised him and wonders, perhaps, if he had partaken in its offer if he would have continued on better for it. It is too late to turn back, for he has committed to the frosted touch of his skin and knows that it is all he has truly earned in this life, if he even earned the love, the life which Amaranthus had so freely and so readily given him. The god has always believed in him, but the unicorn still feels unworthy of such conviction, even now as he follows Amaranthus’ words to find Novus, to find his purpose.
A breath escapes him, and it does not condense on the chilly autumn air like it should. He is walking death, walking dying. Perched evermore on the precipice of the afterworld, with frost crystals clinging to his blue-tinged skin. Then, Grey stops walking, as finds himself on the bank of a river cutting through the forest like a chasm. Grey stops, and he stands on the rocky outcroppings jutting out and around the rushing water. And he stares at his broken reflection and lets the shadows crawl out of the edges of his vision and he listens to the sounds of the night forest and wonders why. Why had he come?
