[P] Take in the Extent of My Sin

[Only]

  

“ there are bullet holes where my compassion used to be ”

Only is standing inside of a cave looking up. 


He is fifty miles outside of any town, hiding from the morning sun which rises valiantly over the shoulders of a distant horizon.  It is almost beautiful, almost, but he is trying to understand something else entirely.  He would go out to greet the warm sun and bask his snakeskin underneath it, but logic and reason hold him back.  Paranoia of the unknown makes him stay here.  Right here  Staring up at stalactmites and wondering if older times are catching up to him.   Very quietly, and to himself, he analyzes his pros and cons before making a decision.


What he knows is that he is in Solterra, deep, deep, deep, inside of a canyon.  

What he doesn't know is how he got here -- or how long it took him.  

Did anybody see him?  Does he know someone here?  Does Stephen?

Only is looking up at the limestone stalactmites and wondering if this is a place that Stephen likes to hide.  He has seen the soft bed, the small collections of baubles and trinkets carefully tucked into, stacked, or even hidden in crevices of the stony walls.  A small cache of things, perhaps his things, but he has already spent the greater portion of the night touching them and hoping for pneumonic memory to unlock another secret.  Stephen's secret.


I live in Denocte now, this cannot possibly be m-- Me?  Oh --


Oh! -- but it is.  All of this certainly is Stephen's.  The poisons.  The traps. The totems.  Definitely Stephen's.


But how?


Stephen must be getting stronger to cut Only out of his rituals and bad habits, stronger yet to take control without Only even realizing it.  Here in the now, Only wonders 'when' he made the decision to go West.  How long does he intend to stay?  Who is he in touch with?  What is Stephen up to?  


Footsteps echo - echoing down the sides of the wall, bouncing around until Only loses his edge and moves out to meet whoever it is that might be coming.  They don't need to see this 'nest' that Only woke up in.  They don't need to know that an outsider is here and that that outsider has secrets that not even Only is privileged to.  


He tilts his pointed black ears forward, green eyes gray in the din of the cave as they spy a thin, wiry figure moving along.  The warmth is piling in, it feels good on his chilled scales and absorbs quickly.  His horn, beautiful and sharp and viscious looking gleams like a weapon (little does he know that it truly is, was, and will be again) -- he has to duck his head down low because raking the tip across stone is the worst feeling ever.


"Oi, what are you snooping around here for?  Go away."  Only's attempts to be unfriendly fail, he's so easy on the eyes that it is difficult to assume that he means any harm.  Sun hits him, he is shiny and spent like an old coin, the awkward look on his face suggests that he might not be the best at chasing anyone off.  The luscious golden hair spilling down to his knees soften him. Nothing about him seems off, not even the scar on his face marking him a theif in Novus stands out when he turns his right eye onto her -- that is his good eye.  Stephen has all the rights to the left eye as far as visual acuity goes.


You could always kill it.  Bury it here.  No one would even know - even you could get away with it.


'It', Stephen says, Only's lip curls in disgust at his own thoughts which aren't really his anyway, but try explaining that to a stranger...


Immediately Only does what he does best, he apologizes,


"I'm so sorry, I just woke up.  I -- eye --"  Her third eye makes him stutter stupidly, he has only ever seen one other horse like that and that one got lost in the Rift.  "Eye just,"  nothing can help him finish the sentence.  Carion wheel overhead, their shadows pinpricks in the red hardpacked earth beneath her feet.  Only, that hapless fool, that dumb idiot, can think of nothing to say except for the obvious.


"I'm just passing through -- "  Or is he?  He is, but is Stephen?


He gets a stranger idea then,  but he will wait for that.


He will wait.

O N L Y
and there is violence in my heart

 

@Apolonia :  I suck at openers but I'll make sure you suffer with my reply.   <3