If am lost, I am lost on purpose.
The sadness had not left her.
It had lingered—long-lasting and bitter and strangely comforting. She doesn’t know how long she had laid there next to him, how long she had wept over his still body, but when she had finally risen, her bones had ached. Her eyes were swollen and her lips chapped, her knees covered in mud. Part of her had considered digging him a grave—something to preserve him—but it had felt more fitting to leave him to the earth and the air. To let him return to the natural order and become part of something larger.
But that had not stopped her from twisting her front legs into something sharp and more tactile. Limbs that could first shear a piece of his mane off and then knot it into her own. It was clumsy work but she had managed to tie the black into her crimson mane and it was comforting to take him with her.
A piece of him as weighty as the sorrow she carried.
As the darkness came.
As the world around her changed once more.
She does not fear it and she finds that she cannot feel much of anything. Cannot feel wonder at the things that shift in the darkness or that familiar thrill at new adventures to be had. She feels strangely hollow, as though the sorrow rattles around in her, and she begins to think she won’t ever feel anything ever again.
That is until she sees him moving through the shadows, a glimpse of his silver.
Dangerous hope spears straight through her as she moves forward, tossing her head back so the dark of his hair falls back to rest against the ivory of her. Terrified that it isn’t real, she forces herself to call out.
“Mesec?”
