there's no going back
when you cross the line
He has not slept.when you cross the line
It is not an entirely strange thing, this lack of sleep -- he spends many nights pacing the streets full of festivity, trying to escape the nightmares that threaten with every wave of exhaustion, the scene that replays every time he closes his eyes.
Snow, stained crimson with a pool of blood atop Dead Horse Ridge. Winifred, sprawled like a doll across the ground, her throat a gaping hole. Desdemona, kneeling by her sister with blood splatter across her chest, frantically muttering a dark spell. Pentecoast, staring at him with an accusation in his pale eyes, his teeth still holding flesh between them.
Look what you’ve done, the wind howls at him, look at what you’ve done.
He wakes up screaming every time, his throat rasped hoarse, until he has taken to just avoiding sleep until he drops from exhaustion. He already hurts, so often -- his joints aching from the strain of supporting his body at such a young age, forced to grow at an accelerated rate in his home land, and the chill of the winter air hasn’t been helping. He feels like a puppet with broken strings, like a machine with rusted pieces -- he thinks, maybe, that he is not entirely a person, with the malevolence that rests inside his chest.
It hangs there, heavy and choking, a constant weight to remind him of what he has done, what he cannot outrun. He cannot control it, try as he might, and he lives in constant fear of the possibility that his magic might break through at any moment.
He catches sight of a familiar face, of antlers with bright jewels hanging from them, and he breathes out a sigh of relief -- Septimus is, at least, someone he recognizes, and he has not yet forgotten how the older man had reassured him at the disaster when his fears had overcome his senses. “Septimus,” He murmurs as he winds his way closer, through the market stalls, and he stops a few feet away from the man with his tail hanging low enough to sweep along the dusty path.
“What have you got there?”
