"Thank you."

These were the young buck's final words, spoken moments after Tiamat placed herself beside and beneath him, uttered in response to her touch, to her kindness, and her innocent, foolish belief that she could still save him from the inevitable.

To her love: so boundless, so selfless, so pure.

Do you feel any better?

It was all he heard. It was all he could think about. It was a question he couldn't answer, not when he lay there feeling nothing but Tiamat against him and a dull, creeping ache that he thought might be death. When he closed his eyes he saw darkness; when he opened them, he realized he couldn't, and he hadn't at all.

Ashamin's body was cement and his heart was a broken drum. He wanted to look at Tiamat, he longed to reciprocate her touch and answer her every word, but he was nothing, anymore. He couldn't move, he couldn't think, and he couldn't breathe.

He wasn't breathing.

He was dead.

Somehow, he knew he was dead.

Do you feel any better?

He heard her question again, over and over, an echo that he could not make stop until he could maybe, someday, find an answer. But how long would that take, trapped in this blackness? Death, he knew now, was nothing but a blindness.

Who was the you? What was it, to feel better? Somewhere in this dark space Ashamin moved. He lifted each leg through that old mud and blood, feeling their weights unlike he ever had before. He could see nothing but he could feel everything happening to him. He was dead, and he could feel everything.

The blood that dripped down his leg never landed. There was nothing to land in. There was just a quiet black and that echo of that voice he so longed to answer.

Do you feel any better?

"Tiamat...." he whispered in his mind, wishing he could will the name past death, wishing he could make it strike air and be spoken.

Do you feel?

"I..." It was nothing. Everything was nothing. The being, the existence, was gone. No air passed through his lips--slightly parted, black and white--as they and his head fell from its place on Tiamat's delicate forelegs and filled slowly with water and blood.

Do you?

"I..." He didn't know who "I" was. He didn't know who anyone was, who this Tiamat even was, this creature who lay beside him so steadfastly as if she owed him her presence, as if she owed him anything.

Do you?

"I feel...."

Ashamin opened his eyes to the darkness of a cave in the Aurora Basin, with Lochan's legs draped over his back and his body wrapped in the silken sarong. The cerndyr's eyes were wide with fear, trapped as witness to a dream his bonded had already forgotten.

Aloud, to no one, to nothing, in darkness, Ashamin spoke and he didn't know why.

"I feel.... better."

"" ""
[[Tiamat--If you want I can post NPC after you and we can keep it in one thread? Might make sense. Just tag me on Ashamin.]]

ASHAMIN

I feel
better

do you?