09-03-2016, 09:32 PM
God, I miss him. It’s so lonely here in this new world, without my Noctem in my head and sharing my body. After a decade or more of being so close, it feels impossible to be so utterly out of reach. Dead has never mattered before, aside from those first days when my body so desperately missed being curled up against his. Now dead is so much bigger, so much more devastating. Like losing him for real for the first time.
I have wandered the meadow, encountering strangers who are far more strange now that I cannot read them the way I used to. I feel naked, blind, deaf, as though all my sense and defenses have been stripped away, and it’s so hard to learn to rely on just five dull senses to tell who is safe and who is danger, who needs something of me and who would gain nothing from an interaction. Who I need, and who I need to get the hell away from.
It all feels so pointless and random, but there’s nothing else I can do. I can’t get back up the mountain to see if there’s any way to reach my Noctem. All I can do is...live on.
Night has fallen, and somehow it’s easier to breathe in the dark, when at least I am not the only one who can’t see as much as she should. When the shadows wrap around me like an embrace and I can pretend I feel a little bit closer to my twin. Best to curl up and sleep somewhere, and hope to all that once was holy that I somehow manage to dream the way I used to. Even if I’m hoping in vain. So I set out to find a spot that looks promising, somewhere cozy and close where no one is likely to stumble across me.
But it seems someone else has had the same thought, because when I finally settle in to sleep, I hear another nearby, sleeping the heavy sleep of the deeply exhausted. I yawn and sigh, too weary to rise and seek out a new spot to bed down for the night. I’ll just wake early and be gone before the stranger rises.
Or, as it turns out, I will not. Instead, the birds wake me just as they have woken him. I stir and stretch and blink open sleepy blue eyes, and peer around the trunk of the tree I’ve rested against to find a strange stallion nearby, black as I am but without my splashy stockings and asymmetrical blaze. Or, of course, the cheery little crescent moon sprawled across my right side, the yellow of sunshine and dandelions.
“Did you sleep well?” I ask, though the depth of his sigh suggests it was perhaps a foolish question. I shrug and add as much. “Probably a dumb question, huh? Everything’s so different now, even sleep. I’m Strange. What about you?”
I have wandered the meadow, encountering strangers who are far more strange now that I cannot read them the way I used to. I feel naked, blind, deaf, as though all my sense and defenses have been stripped away, and it’s so hard to learn to rely on just five dull senses to tell who is safe and who is danger, who needs something of me and who would gain nothing from an interaction. Who I need, and who I need to get the hell away from.
It all feels so pointless and random, but there’s nothing else I can do. I can’t get back up the mountain to see if there’s any way to reach my Noctem. All I can do is...live on.
Night has fallen, and somehow it’s easier to breathe in the dark, when at least I am not the only one who can’t see as much as she should. When the shadows wrap around me like an embrace and I can pretend I feel a little bit closer to my twin. Best to curl up and sleep somewhere, and hope to all that once was holy that I somehow manage to dream the way I used to. Even if I’m hoping in vain. So I set out to find a spot that looks promising, somewhere cozy and close where no one is likely to stumble across me.
But it seems someone else has had the same thought, because when I finally settle in to sleep, I hear another nearby, sleeping the heavy sleep of the deeply exhausted. I yawn and sigh, too weary to rise and seek out a new spot to bed down for the night. I’ll just wake early and be gone before the stranger rises.
Or, as it turns out, I will not. Instead, the birds wake me just as they have woken him. I stir and stretch and blink open sleepy blue eyes, and peer around the trunk of the tree I’ve rested against to find a strange stallion nearby, black as I am but without my splashy stockings and asymmetrical blaze. Or, of course, the cheery little crescent moon sprawled across my right side, the yellow of sunshine and dandelions.
“Did you sleep well?” I ask, though the depth of his sigh suggests it was perhaps a foolish question. I shrug and add as much. “Probably a dumb question, huh? Everything’s so different now, even sleep. I’m Strange. What about you?”