--ow my ass--

--ow my everything--

The momentum carried me back and there was no strength in me to shift about or move some way to soften the blow—so when I hit the ground I hit the ground and horses aren’t really supposed to land on their asses so my forehooves splayed in front of me and I was falling to my side and my shoulder hit the ground too and the shock of it reverberated all throughout my body and rattled my teeth and my shredded tongue—

--and Leos was falling too—I had dragged him to the ground with me and he crashed too, a much larger, paler crash than mine—

And he…he just sorta laid there, the starlight reflected in his eyes as his mouth curved and bent in a way I wasn’t noticing. My mind had—well. It was somewhere but it wasn’t in my head; all I had clanking around up in there was static and buzzing and grey filter just sorta dilating back and forth between the noise of my body (the pain and things coursing through it) and the fading gold of a sunrise that had struck me square in the head.

The only thing penetrating the dullness of my head was that I wasn’t touching him anymore, and that was crucial for some reason, like, a super-duper important fact that I had to clutch and fix and heal (like everything else, like everything else I let myself forget about--). So he was laying there on the ground and I…I mean, I dunno how I did it, I don’t remember standing up but horses aren’t good at crawling either so I guess I…I flopped over to where he was and I wrapped my neck around him again, except not really, we’re not in the position to do that, so I was…I guess I was just basicallylaying across him, my chest on his chest and my neck sorta splayed across his body or whatever, like a slug or another unpleasant thing I could be compared to.

Goddamn I’m tired, was the first coherent thought I stumbled across.

I don’t remember if I…if I dozed off or whatever, because I wasn’t keeping track of time or the world around us or what the stars were doing up there, whether they were laughing or blinking or scowling furiously down at us and our stupidity—I dunno, I wasn’t really attuned to any of that. My eyes were open, even if they were lidded, but they didn’t see anything; they just sort of stared at whatever they happened to land on, whether it be some grass or the edge of some fine-cut marble or the little pale hairs of his body as they rustled in the air or the breeze, if there even was a breeze.

My eyes still leaked, but it wasn’t a storm wrenching out of me anymore. They were just wet and my tongue was starting to swell but the bloody taste in my mouth was receding, so maybe, even though it still hurt like all hell, it was gonna heal itself over after all. But even that was lost on me—in fact, I wasn’t even paying attention to how my chest was throbbing with his impact or how there was a veil of black velvet wrapping around my limps and my deep breathing, a veil that was stamped with the words goddamn, I’m tired.

I wasn’t paying attention to anything--until his words bubbled from his lips and they stirred me awake and aware, so much more gentle than the way he had yanked me from a creeping blackness:

Do you still want to know why?

“Yes,” I breathed, and it was searing hot in my throat as I spoke, aflame with a shame I had cast away behind me when he had touched my cheek and noticed my bloody lip. I had thrown it with the tears of the children in the meadow and the croaking of a deranged woman in my face—I had thrown all of that away, all of it, whatever shitty integrity I had possession of, just because I realized this guy cared for me and it was like ice-water in hell and I drank it greedily and thought to myself oh fuck, I love this water.

But he was reeling me back, and even if I didn’t lift my head off him and my eyes didn’t open any more or look at his voice as he spoke to me, I was being faced with things that needed to be fixed, that went beyond this painful, beautiful thing I was basking in. I sighed and it was shaky and wet, my tears staining his hide (again) as the question continued to throb in me. “Can you tell me, Lee?” I mumbled with a broken tongue and a broken voice. Please, tell me. I need to know. I need to fix this.

I need to make sure you’re not actually a monster, Leos.


"talk"