That everything good is happening somewhere else?
I do not know for what it is that I still live. The meaning of life has truly escaped me, with a passion, as if gleefully aware of how barren a soul it left me. Each breath of air that my lungs pull in feels like a sickening lie, a joke made at my every expense. And it hurts - the air. My lungs are old, rickety, they do not appreciate their sustained usage. Nor do I blame them. I cut off each breath bitingly, savaging what's left of my corporeal bonds to this earth.
But no man can kill himself in such a passive way. My nervous system kicks in each time, forcing me to take another breath. It is a game I play most fervently, knowing no other way to pass the time. Indeed, for me, it seems as if time shall never pass.
I was meant to die long ago.
My family has gone on, to where I shall never know: Rodrik, my brother, disappeared since our time together in the Chamber. Rayelle, my sister, gone away since I was but a colt. My parents have been dead for years, my niece Straia gone away and leaving no trace of her daughter Weaver. Pomona became utterly lost to me long ago, and with her my son Bergamot - my mute little boy, with stars on his skin so like mine.
Where are they all? And why, oh why, must I stay on this earth to suffer their absence.
(Of course, I know the answers to these questions. I know the face that lights up in my mind's eye every time I contemplate lying down and never getting back up; I know the soul and the mind that rest behind her nutmeg eyes, behind her stoicism and gravity. For all my long, long years on this earth, she is the only reason that remains to tether me to it. Daughter. Kagerus. She is out there - but I have yet to find her. And time - it truly is wearing thin.)
The grasses match my base colour perfectly as I wade through them, holding my breath like the stubborn old man I have become. Golden and faded, summer's dying gasp of life - an all too perfect metaphor. I pull lamely at a few strands of the dried fibers, my muzzle completely grayed, exactly as the fur around my eyes is. I am old - blatantly so, painfully so. The curve in my back is exaggerated, the dullness of my coat no longer charming. I once took pride in standing with good posture - but life has left me bedraggled and beached, and there are no kindly strangers to push me back into the ocean.
Or at least, I thought there weren't.
My amber eyes snag on an object far away, a dull brown horse meandering exactly as I do. Thoughtless, melodic, with no consciousness or care. My brows furrow. I cannot see her well, cannot see her features; my eyesight is going, and far more rapidly than I care to admit. Normally, I ignore other creatures. Something calls me to this one.
A breeze blows into my nostrils as I approach the figure - she will not smell me, as the wind is against her. For some time, I do not announce my presence with a nicker, intent on discovering who has captured my curiosity when it has been lost for years. It's a mare, the same hue as Kagerus, but lacking the white patches.
I see her more clearly now, and stop short. There are no thoughts, for a moment. The vastness of my mind is a canvas painted black, a void within which even the most guided could be lost forever. She is not my sister, not my wife, not my child. But somehow, she is even more than all of those things - the true thread that has been tethering me to this earth far past my allotted time.
Then the thoughts do come, and with a vengeance. My ears are trained exactly to her, my nostrils flaring, eyes coming to life in a way that I thought they had abandoned forever. The dull colour of her coat and the way her eyes pray mourning and silence are songs of the angels within me - I take another step forward, extend my nose, begging her to close the distance.
"Insignificance," I breathe, lost to her charm, to her darkened eyes and wonderous soul. I was barely a man the last time we spoke, when I stole her to the Chamber - I was sad man then, full of angst and need and lust for a woman's love. I could have found it in her, then. But I do not hold it against her that it did not happen so, for I love my two children with a passion that even the gods cannot match. Now, as I stand in my abhorred age, I am a man far changed from the one she used to know. I am far from my prime, closer to dead than alive, and worthless in this land. And though perhaps she is the exact same as me, it is not how I see her: she is my sunshine. That which I blossom for.
"I..." I smile, shake my head, in utter disbelief. The words I need are not to be found. The fur on my skin changes suddenly, and an image of her in beautiful youth forms. It is how she stood when we spoke in the chamber, and snow falls gently onto her. I remember the day exactly - and it is shown in that same exactness upon my body. "Hello," I say.
I needn't say more.
I don't think I've ever been able to write anything except novels for my Kavi posts. Goddamn you, old man. You have so much history, it made me so nostalgic to read back on you. Welcome back, Executive Grandpa.