Well I'm scared of what's behind - any.

[Corruption]

Night has always pushed up day. You must know life to see decay.
But I won't rot, I won't rot. Not this mind and not this heart.

It was an unrelenting and lonely flight. Aside his battery of blackbirds, he had spent much of life above the world in clouds as heavy and oppressive as a storm. Whether darkened by discontent or lit ablaze with orangey-pinks, he has come to enjoy the daring inconsistency of the sky. What lies in the cirrus and sunlit lines read something like home. Something like safety and a solitude most unsettling and pensive. What lies there is the enormous absence of sadness. There is no room for memory and pain in the giant endlessness. There is only this: the steady movement of wings, the tireless thrum of of his heart in the silence, the well acclimated ease of breath.

His constant brotherhood of blackbirds that ride the cruel swells of wind. They are relentless in their pursuit of something simple and instinctual. Following a path, yet seen by their own eyes, but mapped out in the molecular level of their existence. Migration. He is their commandant, their stalwart defender. In his shadow they find solace — something protective and violently loyal. He is glad for their faith in him. Quietly pleased for something to hold under his wing, though they lack the substance of size and warmth... and colour. And brightness of character, the telling turn in their features and eyes. And smell.

They lack the beautifully familiar smell. Like rain, dirt and hair.

But he is not so young. Though remarkably robust, the age tells in the silvery hairs around his eyes and nose; the sprinkle of grey in his feathers. He has lived a life without limits — an eternity of space to occupy. But the the big, black stallion is approaching summit. What drives it is his mortality, what lies beyond is his finality. When in motion, blood feeds his wings with youthful vigor. But they whine at night when he curls up around the roots of a roosting tree. They plead, with a pulse and an ache, for an interlude. For the legs to bear the enormous weight of the man. He cannot ignore them forever.

In his dream, he plummets from the sky, reeling and spiraling as if his wings are broken. But they are not, they are simply unresponsive. The spiky tops of pine trees race towards him. Deep green darkness. He inhales sharply, dark eyes snapping open. He never sleeps well when he has to stay here — too many things at haunt. But he has found himself not roaming the above too far away. For a few days straight, returning to tuck himself under the leaf-bare canopy in this sickly familiar place. His flock is long gone on their short migration somewhere warmer, somewhere he knows well. He has conceded, not to stay a-ground, but to wait for them a while. Resident birds keep him company in their absence, but they are poor replacements. The black stallion heaves up with some stiffness, shaking out his massive black wings, and sending off small squalls of snow into the frigid air.

Here, he knows, he once sheltered someone from a summer storm with them. That, in the end, he believes is what they were truly engineered to do. It had been so natural...

Corruption brings the left up a bit and arches his massive head to lip at the individual feathers, preening them with his teeth gently. Above, the night sky is adorned with stars, cloudless and cold. Endless and welcoming.

Corruption.
I won't rot.

[clock]

She is old; very, very old - ancient even, grizzled and swaybacked but somehow, still alive - trapped in this miserable existence that ever only had one bright shining moment in the rain. The old mare cannot stand the rain, the smell of petrichor afterwards is as warm and inviting as their broken love had been, and she cannot look at a blackbird the same way either. It all reminds her of him - the only one she ever allowed in, ever allowed herself to love in whatever miserable capacity she was capable of loving him in. By now, she has forgotten all those long years ago how she became so marked inside and out by scars, by her own pure despondency, that they are all that she has now - empty but vivid reminders that this is who she is: sorrow personified. Except when she was around him, because he was more broken than she was and somehow, their two broken selves made an imperfect whole.

Clock is earthy, grounded - he was not, he was winged and godlike and could touch the sky in a way she never could, but she never envied him that because he was always rooted to her, to their deep abiding love, even his blackbirds settled amongst them, perched on their backs like common cowbirds, and roosted there in their strange sorrowing presence. Misery loved company and it loved them best, the black stallion and the painted mare. She is thinking of their familiar embraces, necks wrapped around necks and lips touching skin - always touching skin, like they could never get enough of one another. Clock ought to have stayed, but she always felt the pull of something other than him - something that urged her feet to move tirelessly, much in the way that he always took to the sky and flying, some natural instinct that made them separate and come back together, time after time.

It is cold, achingly so, a bone-deep ache that chases the warmth right out of her and she thinks achingly of a long ago beneath the sheltering embrace of a great black wing… No Clock, stop these thoughts now! She shakes the snow out of the tangling hairs of her great shaggy mane and the thoughts get shaken right out of her head, memories that go tumbling off like strange imps. There is no time for pestering remembrances, only perpetual motion because she doesn’t know how to stop except for that one time… Stop! She is harsh in her rebuke of herself, gnashing her old worn down teeth together, so full of angst that animates her ancient flesh more so than anything else. It wasn’t life that made her move, never had been - it was always the world’s sadnesses that she swallowed up and ate, that kept her fat and fed, and she was all the sweeter for it, her eyes brown and knowing in that world-weary way of those that have seen way too much and cannot forget it all even if the memories stay in the shadows.

The mare dislikes this place and what it conjures up inside her - hope, a mere kernel of brightness that she cannot keep from shining in her sad old eyes. It was always here that she found him, found respite from the rain that each of them had friended in their misery. There is only snow and bleakness now, and that seems somehow rather fitting. She plods along on a slow wandering vague course that has no purpose or destination; this is simply how she has always been, old and slow and doddering. The tedium is maddening but she never wakes long enough to be that vibrant creature that once stood at his side, flushed with love and madness. A scent stops her, stays her course long enough for her to scout about with nose and eyes, the scent more maddening than curious because fury is an ember rolling along her bones but it burns out - it wasn’t him, just a memory, she tells herself.

In the starry night, the ugly old mare passes by a large stallion preening his wing and she never looks his way because he’s a shadow of a time long ago that she cannot bear to see. He’s the shadow at the edge of her eye, full of magic and mystery, that makes her want to look but if she does, he’ll fade away and she cannot bear to those this thread of him now.

[Corruption]

Night has always pushed up day. You must know life to see decay.
But I won't rot, I won't rot. Not this mind and not this heart.

For a long time, it seemed almost as if the sky was some preservation chamber — kept supple and fit beyond his years. And so every time they met he was only a little unlike the last incarnation of himself; perhaps more grey around the nostrils, maybe more stiff in the waking hours. He had been stilled in time, as he had been slowed in life. Quiet isolation, the pump of wings, these things became the nourishment of his hours. The slow bleed of light into dark, but even that was a poor tell of time. Not of the change of days, but of the sheer magnitude of time, always passing. Each breath drawn was worth a thousand in the suspended animation. When in flight he was so alike a demigod, an inferior offering, but nonetheless bettered in the make of his iron muscles and singular mind. Something approaching immortal — but soil is humbling. Hard, homely earth, where time catches up just as surely as the day and night, and so do his shades.

He knows life amoungst shadows. He must. Where they are absent high above, making the clouds all the more alluring, they populate the atmosphere here as thick as fog. They attach to him like vampires, pulling from his body the vigor, so otherwise indomitable. So he stays and waits for her like a fanatic. Desperate, because she is revitalization, mending him of the wounds caused by their own madness, and making him strong again. Ready to lift off. It is written in the incomprehensibly fickle and cruel directions of their shared devotion that to make it too sickly sweet, they must meet if only for the strength to part. They are cursed to walk away, fed for another decade. Sustained on the meat and spirits of memory — memory of touch, memory of scent — and of anguish.

Because as sure as sorrow can cause ruination, so can it remind the body and mind that there is something there, waiting, in the pain. And pain becomes life.

But in that crucible, sometimes the exoskeleton that grows around becomes over fortified. Too hard. It necessities a suit of armor, some protection from the slings of artillery (even so very high up); but he has built a citadel. A great yawning fortress to protect with ferocity any tenderness left inside. At times it has made him distant. Not just in altitude, but in the subversion of himself — he has not always been proud, but he has never been cruel. He has shed his sadness and donned apathy; he has sampled from the cups of things that might free his mind. It was never meant to be successful, in the end he conceded to the air as the only thing there was to occupy his restless, mortal hours.

But they are growing long in the tooth.

When the wintry air marks with a familiar scent (a faraway type of familiar) he takes it only as a phantom. A detached piece of something long transpired, still wandering this place as aimless as them. This is not the first time he has caught a whiff or a glance, so convinced of its veracity he might nicker to it. Hoping for a reply, but met with silence. He drops his great wing and turns his head all the same, because he has been stung time and time again, but continues to grab for everything recklessly. It is all they have left to do — to avoid and to quell hope; to hope, naked and vulnerable. She is not as she was, but she never would be. Nor is he, the change is just more subtle. The slow cessation of his functions is coming just as inevitably. She is not as she was, but she doesn't need to be. Swayback and silver be damned, he recognizes her at once. Who else can it possibly be? This is too on time, and in their strange way, it makes too much sense.

He pulls in a sharp inhale of cold air, choking a bit on the harshness of it. Like a man walking to the executioner's slab, he is both ready and apprehensive. She might reveal herself a projection of the stars and slip away back into the dark sky, staying their reunion. He can only handle so much. She does not look at him right away, but he understands better than anyone. “How does all this end do you think, Clock?” His voice is a low grumble, broken by gallows humour and despair, because they cannot flirt with the end for much longer. He reaches out to the arch of her neck, searching for the warmth and smell. That gift of hers to him.

Corruption.
I won't rot.

[clock]

She is a mountain that time chips away at; slowly but surely, she is growing worn around the edges - the jut of her hipbone is arthritic and sharp, the sway in her back deepened, the sag in her belly natural and low. But she has never paid much attention to these things but there was gray in her muzzle back when they first met; Clock was always old, but he delayed time whenever they were together and every second was an eternity to them in which they felt nothing but the strength of their love and the overlap of their bodies and smells. She always came away with a bit of the sky in her eyes after having spent an eternity (only a moment really!) with him, and these small eternities became the sustenance on which she grew fat enough to survive the years that passed without him until eventually she grew sparse and lean and there he was again, dark, godly, and winged like a terrible blessing come down from the skies and when they were together - it always rained, and she always took shelter against his side beneath a great arched wing.

They are one of the great unknown tragic love stories of this land.

It is a story that remains untold except by the beaks of blackbirds calling in the night.

She tries to remember every moment together but her memory fails her.

Clock knows they are not long for this world; time has marked them for death and it creeps behind them in their shadow, cold and knowing. Every so often, she can feel the fingers of it brush down her old spine in a promising caress and she hears a little whisper saying “Soon…” Not all great tragic love stories get the ending they deserve but she can only hope that they do and hope is what she feeds on nowadays - her, lowly, homely Clock, is entirely too hopeful as she once swore to never be again but he is her ruination and now hope is too. She doesn’t hope too much - it will kill her and that is a crueler knife than time ever could be, but her thoughts drift to the small forevers that they’ve known, that sustain them in the parting of ways that always comes up; it is their pattern, their way, their habit to touch and love and leave in the end, that’s just what they do best, mourn and miss and meander off.

The smell of him is strong and maddening, why is it so achingly familiar and fresh in her nostrils like she just rubbed her nose all over his black skin? Hoofbeats sound entirely too close and ghosts don’t make noise like that, so can it be? Clock hopes against all reason and finally looks at him, her heart breaking wide open all over again with love and misery - two very old companions to both of them. His voice fills her ears and more so, the entirety of her body and Clock just floats in the absence of it after he’s finished speaking. “We die,” she says simply enough, with no regret in her voice - they’re old, not immortal, and death is the natural answer to the question of how does it all end? “We’ll be lucky if we go together,” she tells him, maybe a little sadly then, because how often do lovers get to take their last breath with one another? His nose touches her neck, painted and rough, because she was never a soft sleek creature - just solid, smelly (in a good horsey way), and she would always be that for him - solid, there, present.

That’s her gift to him - to be something tangible, like he is a dark gift to her, magical and different, and she hears his brood of blackbirds nearby as they cackle. It is a song that always soothes her, like his great hulking self and she cannot help but lean in towards him, her own nose searching for those dark familiar pockets of his flesh that she knows so well but her lips catch in the oily sheen of his feathers, caressing and soft - the only soft thing about her really.

[Corruption]

Night has always pushed up day. You must know life to see decay.
But I won't rot, I won't rot. Not this mind and not this heart.

Perhaps this prelude has been the longest.

He cannot remember, because no matter how long, it was always too long. Too close to flirting with the threshold of forever – far too often threatening an eternity in place of a mere decade or so. When they are together, it is a diminutive glimpse of a millennia, drawing every second dry to the bone. Extending every touch and every breath as long as possible. They have become too out of time. Too unfamiliar now with the true nature of its second and minute hands – as sure as they have kept themselves in life for longer than either of them would have thought possible, so are they they still subjects of reality. Of physics, of gravity; of maturation and of senescence. When he dreams of falling from the sky, it is not a mere nightmare, but an omen. A promise. That one day like her shoulders and cheekbones will be chewed away by the force of wind and nature, ground to dust; so will his wings cease to carry his weight, a death as good as anything biological and total. So this may be the longest of their separations, and maybe that is why when she calls on the specter of death he simply makes a hm sound in his throat. Acceptance (accepted long ago) and macabre curiosity.
And a bit of longing, almost perceptible, for a fair ending.

They are too old, and death scares neither of them. At least, not the mention of it. That is a mercy of age, to be able to look at the inevitable and smile – if not with full acceptance, at least with a sweet saudade; and they have much to smile back on. Though it does not seem like much, and even between the two of them they were unlikely to recall a full picture, it is all there. If not in specifics, but in the soft recollections of their senses. And that is most powerful. In the telling scent of pre-rain, and in the petrichor thereafter. In the touch, and with some sadness and shame from him, in the fruits of their union – two, in theory, neither of whom he has met, and that perhaps would be his biggest regret in the end.

He could ask her about them – he wanted to, but like a child stayed for fear of reprimand, he is wary to admit his own misdeeds as a father. And, because he is afraid of any underlying sourness or disappointment she might have felt of him, as sharp as a knife to the shoulder blades. Because they are not his only, when they should be. Almost all of the others are the tokens of the intemperance borne of loneliness.

He has not always been proud. But he has never been cruel.

He inhales, feeding his mind and heart, too long caught in the grip of famine. ’We die.’ He looks at her, without rain and without the sharp sudden revelation of lightning. Maybe it is the moonlight that softens her, or maybe he does not see the tightness of her flesh and bones as anything more than a lovelier angle in age. ’We’ll be lucky if we go together.’ This delivers a strike, and his brow furrows together. ’We’ll be lucky…’ He abhors the pessimism, the insolence of it to intrude on them, here! But he cannot help the anxiety that creeps up the knots of his spine. “Then we’d best keep close, my dear,” He mutters sadly, feeling her touch on his wing and he remembers what it is there for. He lifts it up, moving to stand rib-to-rib with her, a place to lean. He drapes it over her back and down her side, the wind brushing the broad, black secondary feathers against her belly. “That’s the only shot we’ve got.”

And he cannot belie the doubt in his voice, and the utter heft of longing for her vision to be their reality. They deserved that and more; a time-machine, the will to settle down together, enough respect for their love to let it stay. But they are wanderers. Piteous creatures.

Corruption.
I won't rot.

[clock]

She longs for it too - that fair ending.

Wants, that promise of them together at the end.

But her wants are like their times apart - long, futile, hopeless, and yet - she still has them, those wants to simply lay down beside him at the last, heads close, knees tucked underneath their bodies, his wing across her back, his blackbirds roosting in the branches of the tree above them and like that - they are dead and gone. Let the wind and the world do their work and blow their bodies to dust but let them have this - the end, together.

For now though, it is enough that they are, whatever that may be and it might be as simple as a moment like this in which both of them are old and graying but outside of time and it’s constraints somehow.

Their unions had never been lonely, not after because she had parts of him in their children’s construct - a colt’s height, a filly’s glance, these things told of their sire’s influence more than Clock’s and she never begrudged the fact that not once did he ask about them and not once did she offer to tell him about them. They were not secrets but her time with him was all for him - for them, and that left no room for tales of the foals that always came afterwards, of how she was dutiful as a mother but little more than that, even she could not say - she cared for them and she turned them away from her side at the appropriate age, and she did not hope for their forgiveness if they found her lacking because she believed she had done her part - she bore them, fattened them up on whatever she could (her milk, facts, few stories, whatever they asked for she gave them but sparingly because every ounce of her was saved up for him), and she cast them out. It was only natural.

He has never disappointed her.

He has never been cruel to her.

Even their partings - their long times apart - they are not cruelties but realities meant to be endured and to make their times together all the sweeter. Never has she been so triflingly silly as to feel slighted by him in any manner. Never has she associated him with any wrong in her life - he has always been a right, a rock solid at her shoulder, and never has she thought less of him but always more, and love has a way of doing that - making her funny and blind towards things, making him seem great in ways that maybe he isn’t really but how could he not be? His greatness actually lays in the fact that he loves her - continues to love her old sad self. His love is her salvation and through it - through him - she tastes a little bit of that greatness too.

He mutters sadly about keeping close and she acknowledges this sentiment with a slow nod as he lifts his wing so that she can tuck herself in against him like she always has. These gestures are second nature to them, even down to the rippling of the soft (like old worn velvet) skin of her belly at the touch of his secondary feathers to it, the sensation is akin to that of tickling even if it cajoles no laughter from her - she’s too old for such silliness but some spry part of her thinks how nice it would be to just be silly together but they’ve never been that. Then her mind circles back to the tangent of together - of how he mentioned sticking by one another and there was a certain finality to that, considering that they have never made such a pact before. She tilts her head to the side and looks up at him from where she is tucked so preciously into his side; “We must then,” she agrees, equally as piteous as he is because it means finding a reason to stay beside one another. There is reason enough in their love, in their token bond, but they have always worked best as wanderers that meet and find one another time and time again - that is their sad love story, and how could it possibly work this time?

It must, she reasons, chewing on the thought like a cow chews cud - slow and muddling.

Quite simply, it must.

Clock is resigned and equally resolved - she can give up the most basic and precious part of her nature for him. She can say goodbye to the wandering that her feet have always known and settle down somewhere beside him, as long as he is there, she is old enough, perhaps it is time to hang up the hat of travel. She tells herself it is for his sake - their sake, after all.

Clock starts to say something, swallows, begins again - “Where do you live?”

She has never asked him this, not once.

She asks now for the sake of their fairytale ending that is owed to them.

She thinks of the Dale, once, it was home but that was so long ago!

Now, she thinks only of him and the shadowy thought of death that haunts her old tired brain.

He is home, she realizes, always has been.