It's a bit of a miracle, that he’s still alive.
By all rights he shouldn’t be, this glassy thing, achingly frail in this body and dreadfully aware of it. Some predator or monster should have made an easy meal of him, or he should have fallen, shattered, pieces of him scattered to the earth.
(He did die, once, under a wolf-queen’s insane hooves, but powers he doesn’t know brought him back.)
But he persists, through luck or magic or other powers he doesn’t know. He grows older, though perhaps no wiser, and he survives.
It’s not much of a life, though. It’s existence, dull and repetitive, and somewhere along the way it became isolated, too. He stopped seeking company, in part from fear (he is so easily destroyed) and in part because he stops finding joy in it.
He stops doing a lot of things.
(Does he stop thinking of her? Sometimes. There are hours – maybe even days – when his mind is almost blank. It’s peaceful, to not have his heart twist in that particular way it always has when she crosses his mind.)
This is a deviation, his trip to the meadow. The crowd, scattered, feels too pressing, suffocating. Yet he had been drawn here, compelled. He doesn’t know why, he knows only that his joints ache from walking so far, paper-thin wings folded to his back.
He’s waiting. He thinks he’s waiting.
contagion
be careful making wishes in the dark
@[laura] <333