Winter was steadily growing tedious. Something about the endless cold, no matter how used to it he was from childhood days, or the shirking of snow under cloven hooves, or the chill of snow upon the back was slowly wearing down the already short patience of the black stag. He had to admit to himself that he was turning into a grouch; everything irritated him, from the merry titter of birds in the bushes to the patter of melting snow during particularly warm late-winter days. Every sound grated on his nerves until the chiseled ears threatened to stick in their backwards tilt, a perpetually sour expression keeping most intelligent creatures out of his way.

He had felt like striking out at something all day, wanting to stomp and charge, rip and tear and destroy something... But now that he stood over the steaming carcass of a rather unfortunate snowshoe hare (it had appeared before him at just the wrong moment, interrupting him as he tried to dig for food), with rapidly cooling blood splattered over chest and legs and freezing into crimson stains on the bone mask, Morir was beginning to question his own sanity.

Confutatis might have laughed at the shame and regret that washed through him as the terrified shrieks of the rodent faded into silence. That asshat Tyradon would have snorted upon seeing the nauseous expression the youth carried now, taken the moment to pass off some snide remark on how Morir would be next... Fortunately - or perhaps unfortunately since their presence would have forced him to snap out of the bout of insanity in the first place - neither of the two were in the vicinity, and so the swarthy Duke was left to his own devices. Left completely alone, to revel and roll in lament and pity.

Empathy was always useless when it came too late.

Standing so still he would appear paralyzed the blind mongrel felt dazed, caught unprepared by the chaos that followed upon this event, this gruesome and so cruelly unnecessary funeral. It was the very first time in his life that he had ended the life of another breathing creature (not counting bugs of course - did they even breathe in the first place?) and somehow it felt monumental, like a step past some invisible line of no return.

When had he become this vicious? When, in all his long gray years of loneliness and mental exile, where darkness and silence had been his only companions, had he begun to lash out at others just to soothe the ache within? Perhaps the worst part of it all was that he didn't regret it as much as he probably should. It was a life that lay there before his hooves, once vibrant and full of energy and movement and now transformed into a bloody pile of fur and flesh, of crushed bones and gore, deformed beyond recognition by his own merciless hooves. Why wasn't he crying? Why, when all the forest around him had grown silent in shock and mourning, did he feel nothing but a distant sensation of shock at his own actions?

Empathy would remain useless if it never appeared in the first place.


@[Windwalker]