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Something stirs outside. There is heat breaking upon his back through...trees? No. It couldn't be trees. The only forsaken trees he saw were farther ahead, over the cold jut of granite that still ascended before him, winding a path to someplace greener and wetter. But something happened before that, certainly he wasn't there yet. He tried remembering, tried. There were rocks, the sun, fatigue. It was all coming back now. One mare who had a hell of a lot of bad luck and... He thought harder, mental vision briefly blinded by black abyssal forget. He strained. Oh, of course! Of course he forgot about the way his eyes failed, fell back into his head like trees falling to the earth. There was finality to it, ending that pathetic struggle. And with the inexplicable exhaustion caving in at last, the beast went on kissing the rocks like a child's first go at standing for the first time. That's how it ended.
His brain turns. How was he feeling? This was death after all, right? A moment passes, still not entirely black but gray enough to think. It was odd and long. He breathes, feels the warm shine of gold sun stroking down his spine. There are sounds beginning to curl over, mist him like fog. But mostly, there's the overwhelming sense of warmth, flooding over him like the sun does to the world in the morning.
So he was still alive. It was nice to know.
He sighed, though immediately surprised to notice silk strands of new grass embracing him instead of sharp rock pushing up through his ribs. He was more than startled now, warmth burning a little hotter with the clearing seconds. The senses came, one at a time. Sight came with rejuvenated strength, pried open eyelid slabs to the unyielding blare of sunlight peering perfectly down the barrel of his fucking pupil.
Shit!
The pathetic mass writhed in the sun's stabbing rays, rolling up with barely enough momentum to fold legs under him. Sunlight was the world's blessing: birthing nature, casting shadow, bringing spirit. Today sun was a curse. With eyes bulging out of sockets and stomach sinking through his ribs, Malachi rose to his hooves. He wavered, stretched the thin neck even thinner, found balance sifting through stocked legs down to numb pasterns.
Drunkenly, Malachi staggered to the water. He didn't question its existence, just nodded to the unlucky bastard in the reflection and pressed cracked lips beneath the slick ambrosia. It could have been pure piss, cold blood, acid and he still wouldn't have stopped. The coldness of it rained through his arteries, settled into that dry, quaking stomach that probably closely resembled the shriveled skin of a raisin. And as quickly as the water filled him, brimmed him, Malachi felt pain bubble to the surface of his throat from his parched heart. Suddenly the lake began to slip out of him from wilted eyes that still held the black clotted dots of sunlight.
Pain teared its way out of him. Starting from the bottom of his soul shaking raggedly from his labored breaths, staining the world with bloody wails. He couldn't control what was coming out of him, uglier and more starving than his emaciated body could explain. He was wild at it, breaths wheezing and sputtering out like mucus, sweat just bleeding through from the strength it took to realize how lost he was. He was flayed open, a mere carcass calling for the buzzards, pleading for their arrival. The pecking could take him down and bury him back with the soil. They would be his funeral.
But there was something else inside him that strained against the pain. Something vague and weightless, but hot and demanding. It pushed against his back, made its way through the black dots in his vision, made him see what lived still in that tear-filled reflection. The sun, still bitched with full force — motivated by god knows what — lighting his white ass up like he was some kind of white, open face flower. It didn't mock him. It made him see.
He was a white rose; dripping from the healing rains.
He was born from something fallen to grow on something dead.
He was alive.
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