looking for heaven found the devil in me; any

[abysm]

He is feeling rebellious today, the boy from the abyss.

(What is he really, he wonders. Monster? Shadow? Or something else entirely that they dreamed up together at the moment of conception?)

Rebellious enough to leave the safe and suffocating confines of Hyaline. It is easy to leave - to steal away in the night because they think him tucked in safe and sound somewhere, most likely dreaming. Abysm is dreaming. He’s left a dream of a tired and obedient colt lying in the grass beneath the trees that block out the black of the sky above him. It is a peaceful easy dream and takes nothing at all for him to plant it in the minds of his mother and her queenly lover.

His mother might eventually untangle the simple threads of the dream he leaves her with. In fact he knows she will at some point since he inherited his trait and raw skill from her. For now he is free of everything except the confusion still surrounding his origins. He knows now that he was pulled from the abyss and put into the fetus forming in her then passed into his father’s body for Rapt - not Kagerus - to birth him. And he could forgive this since birthing any foal would mean the end of her but he is finding it hard to reconcile the fact that she left them.

Just up and left. No explanations given. Not even know as they try to move forward as mother and son. But thoughts like these leave him sullen and mean backed by a hot wellspring of anger that feeds him as much as his dreams do. Before he knows it, fog is swirling around everything including him. 

He can make out the shadowy shapes of giant trees and knows well enough to avoid them. Gods or not, he’d prefer not to tangle with a redwood in low visibility. Salt tickles his nostrils along with something else. Something that smells old and dead. It makes him want to gag but horses don’t have that reflex so he snorts a few times, forcefully expelling air to rid his nose of the reek.

Only the smell grows stronger. Strong enough to be right in front of him as is the shape of a decaying old horse. “My god!” he says, unable to stop himself from saying anything else. His eyes look the monstrous mess up and down though he is not completely disbelieving of what he sees - he’s seen worse in his dreams. Made worse in his dreams though what stands before him is nice fodder for nightmares... what would mother think of him now as he considering bad dreams over good? 

Well she’s not here to rebuke him so he simply smiles and says, “You stink.”

@[Rodrik]