They walk in silence for a time. Blessed, sweet silence, despite its blanket heaviness draping around their shoulders. It does not last for long, however, as the young pegasus speaks again. ‘Best meet with Somnus, then. The sovereign of Dawn. He'll know what to do.’ Grey nearly stumbles, nearly comes hard to his knees there on the dirt and the grass. Somnus. It couldn’t be, could it? A coincidence, it had to be.
But then... had Amaranthus known?
Somnus, Somnus, Somnus.
His heart cannot breathe and his lungs cannot beat, and all he can hear is a man sentencing himself to death and the smell of burning and blood and damp. He thinks the shadows in his vision aren’t just shadows but ghosts. Ghosts of the dead and demons of hell, coming to drag him down to his death for all the wrongs he has made in his life. And Somnus is there, a bright beam of light, knowing, judging. Whatever is there of the unicorn’s heart wrenches, and he grinds his teeth against the wave of pain rising inside of him.
It cannot be, no, it must be a coincidence. He has not come all this way just to be faced with a reminder of his past. His continued existence is already enough, that he lives while so many he loved had died, and many more gone, abandoning everything. They stop inside the walls of the court and Grey’s hooves chink against the cobblestone streets like they are made of ice.
He doesn’t pay attention to Mateo’s greeting of the guard, doesn’t even look at the young man. His white white eyes are swimming in shadows and hauntings. He is drowning but desperately clinging to some preserver, hoping above all things that his worst fears are not true.
Somnus cannot be here.
“There is no god on your mountain that I want,” he says, swimming, struggling, and he wants to go back to his own mountain and find Amaranthus and never come down again. He wants to scream until his god comes back to him, and explains everything. He wants to fall back into that wintery embrace and just let go, at last. “I will find my way from here,” Grey mutters, and takes his first steps further into the streets.
Oh, he will wander for hours in the night, until he cannot see straight and his legs are as exhausted as his lungs. He will wander until the sun comes up, lost, floundering, aching, but he will not be anyone’s problem but his own, as he leaves the young pegasus behind.
@Mateo a super painful closer for you
