resurrect the saint within the wretch
If only he knew that she was attempting to grasp at whatever was left of her mother so that she might feel something, just one emotion to pull her from the brink (and perhaps it is a strange blessing that his visions do not come with mind reading; he is sure his heart would break far more than it currently does), for the horned stallion before her - though he stands as still and stoically as the silent snow-laden woods around them - fights to sort through the entanglement of emotions that shred through his chest. Guilt, sorrow, hopelessness, sympathy. They all twist and turn like ugly, convoluted things within him, alive and breathing. But somehow, on the outside, he is just a silent shadow towering over her, wrapped in the darkness of nightfall.
She had died; he had seen it - had he been wrong? Had she gone beyond, like in his vision, and back again? The questions curl uncomfortably, cold and stifled within his mind. Moonlight has spilled between them, silver against the bright white of the patches of fresh-fallen snow, the darkness of the rocks and the tall pines painting the entire river in greyscale. Besides the shudder of the rushing river, the silence between them is nearly deafening. There is a flurry of movement that gives his dark ocean eyes focus, his head lowering just slightly so that his horns nearly fall into the auburn of his neck.
And then, after moments and moments (and Warden thinks he might have stood there forever, waiting to hear a voice come from the crumpled and tiny mare), she calls back to him through the thin, cold, and unforgiving air of winter.
Stay back!
Warden wonders if she can hear his heart breaking, barely beating in his chest.
The stallion’s wings that were already folded into his sides shudder slightly, his onyx legs moving as he takes a few steps back. He obeys her command, but there is a heaviness in his gaze that weighs him down; he moves slowly, methodically, unwillingly. “I’m sorry,” he whispers into the darkness after a long while, his breath clouding before his pink lips. “I just - I need to know you’re alright.”
He can’t tell her why he needs to know (how do you tell someone you’ve seen them die?), so silence and darkness swallows them both again, the jeweled blue of his horns sparkling in the shadows of night.
@[Astra Daggenhardt]
