He is slat-sided and sharp angles when he makes his slow way out from the blind canyon that he has made his home in, his once-strong hooves cracked and dirty, his mane a tangled snarl along the thin line of his neck -- his stomach is a beast that howls against the conditions of the canyon, that growls and gurgles its emptiness to the world, and he has grown used to ignoring the sounds. His movements are mechanical, a force of habit more than any driving decision -- he swings into a lethargic trot in the general direction of the Court, through the winding canyons and tunnels that make up the Elatus, searching out a plateau he has not grazed bare since the winter started and Raum had sealed up the supplies of the court in the Oasis. Even in starvation, his pride will not waver -- he will not beg on bended knee to be fed. He will survive, or he will die. Above him, the vulture cackles -- it is fat and wanting, indolent in how it lounges around his canyon always just out of reach, soaring on the thermals above him and waiting for him to collapse so that it can feast. It has been showing up more often, now, perching on cacti and hovering above his head, beady eyes trained on him, and all that he can do is grit his teeth in stubborn resolve and press forward. He will not give it the satisfaction, either. When he turns a sharp corner and finds himself face-to-face with a ghost of his past, though, something inside his chest cracks and howls, his lip curling up and exposing his teeth in a snarl. “Jetsam fucking Volta,” rolls off his tongue with all the venom of a striking snake, and oh -- oh, he knows it is only his traitorous mind, and his aching heart, and his starving stomach,but he aches for the apparition to be real even when he knows it will not be. “You’re not real,” He declares, finally, after a long moment of silence in which he stares down the ghost, and he is sane enough to realize that he is slipping into insanity, if he is hallucinating Sam now -- Sam, who had left him years ago, who left wounds on his heart that still festered there, who is standing before him as though all those years have been only minutes. “You can’t be real.” |
@Jetsam
