who's to know if your soul will fade at all

the one you sold to fool the world

Overhead the clouds were darkening, communing like a murder of crows against the horizon and painting sullen, inky lines of black across the sky as they accumulated. Electricity lingered in the air, a warning of the storm to come, and yet even as it posed a threat to the twilit quietude, Roland found himself unwilling to move from the place he stood. Beneath the glare of moonlight, a fragile confusion had settled into the pale contours of the filly’s frame, a discrepancy to her stance that set the entirety of her sterling figure off kilter. The Thief could not quite find what was out of place, besides the obvious and peculiar luminance of her horn, but he was drawn from his speculation when her voice broke the silence between them.

She offered a vague response, leaving Roland with a feeling of concern and discomfort twisting in his mind, knowing himself to be a poor source of comfort. If there was something the Thief could say to make her feel better, then surely he would leap upon the opportunity. She seemed benign and gentle enough now, but nonetheless such instincts did not come to him naturally. Still, his lips twitched downwards in consideration, a frown darkening his eyes as he regarded her under the glow of fractured moonlight.

The child’s eyes did not hold his inquisitive gaze, slipping away instead to study the grass, or the empty sky that had flung its bejeweled mantle across the horizon. A softly spoken question followed on the heels of her averted stare, and it satisfied his curiosity well enough. Even as his shoulders tilted in a shrug, he nodded slowly. “I believe we’ve met before,” the Thief confirmed, though he was certain of it. There was no forgetting a face once you’d seen it like that, rotting, shredded, and coming apart at the seams. She was in much better condition now, he observed, though there was still an air of sickliness that clung to her. This theory was reinforced shortly after by a sharp sneeze, splitting the silence and taking Roland by surprise. He flinched away imperceptibly, a flicker of alarm slipping through his composure before he tilted his head at her once again.

“You weren’t yourself, I know. Whatever happened when you were under the influence of…” How would he even begin to articulate it? Had it been a disease; some nefarious possession that had robbed so many of their agency? “It wasn’t you,” he decided upon, letting the threads of his previous, unfinished sentence drift away. The tone of his voice carried a note of pardon, absolution. She had done Roland no harm, even if the memory still haunted his dreams. Perhaps she had little memory of it at all, which the Thief would consider a blessing.

Curling his tail across his hocks, he stepped towards the river bank and cast a roving eye over its bubbling surface. The questioned balanced on the tip of his tongue was too prying to be asked of a stranger, he knew; there were softer ways of finding an answer, but he did not have the heart to toy with her when she already seemed so fragile. So without fanfare he inquired, “Are you sick?” And hoped, if she replied with the affirmative, that it was not contagious.

@[Sikeax]