somebody shine a light
I'm frozen by the fear in me

Stop—

And he was screaming it as much at himself as at her—fucking stop, press pause, rewind. Do it all again. Do it better, because this hurt, a black fire billowing up the back of his throat like acrid bile. Choking. Choking on the guilt and the shame and the reckless anger, while thin, sharp needles pricked his heart—laceration, he thought dimly for a moment, the word sweet and painful as it danced through his mind.

Laceration. Like thin, red veins crisscrossing frosted glass, or ice, thin cracks bleeding—

His head hurt. It pounded with all the things left unsaid, all the wrongs left unrighted; with the memory of all the words he had said, and wished he never had. His mouth was half-open, lower jaw trembling, like he wanted to spit out sorry but it couldn't move past his teeth. Because he was sorry—sorry that his tongue had run away with him, sorry that his savage emotions had overpowered his rationality.. sorry that he was alive, sitting on his ass in the presence of someone who deserved so much more than his callous ire.

Please, he wanted to say, tear-stained blue eyes tilted up to the beautiful sky and black-rimmed ears hiding somewhere in the mess of his mane. Please, stop, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I know I'm wrong, please—

Because he couldn't stand to hear her angered hurt, knowing that he had caused it, and that he deserved it. It was as if everything he had ever tried to be, open-minded and just and honest and compassionate, had just walked out the door when the grief came in like a dark and cold storm. Loneliness drove it all apart, until he actually yelled "I'M SORRY!" in the middle of her speech. His voice was thick, his eyes wild, but he quieted—what else could he do? It had been so fucking dumb and he had known it and he hadn't been able to stop the words tumbling out, like, like if he could not be happy no one else could. Just because Helovia had fucked him over so many times, why did it have to be like that for everyone else? Why did he have to try and tear down her chances of a happy life here, just because he always seemed unable to find it?

He had seen the Rift Gods. He had smelled them and heard them and felt them in the pits of his gut—felt their wrong, their sick greed, their ill nature, and heard the disease in their inhuman voices. What was to say she hadn't suffered more in the Rift, than he had in Helovia? What was to say that his life, hell as it was for him, wasn't her paradise?

I'm sorry—

And she was in his face and he toppled to the side, the flat of his left shoulder striking the wet sand. Lament your life away— So what the fuck was he supposed to do? Freeze himself over? Then he would feel nothing—be nothing. And when he felt, he was—weak. A disaster. A disgrace. Something one could not look at without pity, as he wasted his life—

What do you want from me? For him to pop to his feet and fucking smile as brightly as the sun? To go about as if nothing had happened? To somehow stitch up the voids gaping in his heart, and go about his business like he had any fucking clue who he was, and was supposed to be, and do?

"Show me you can fight, show me how to save myself from this land fraught with greed and violence and pain. Please." He was lying on his side, hair spread like a halo around his neck, pushed over like a sack of grain and bones—a large, pale creature toppled to the ground, pride broken. And she asked him to fight? "Are you serious," he said before he knew it—which, honestly, would make him worthy of a hoof in the brain—but somewhere beneath the disbelief lurked a note of amusement, so tiny, so fragile, but like some part of his disjointed humor had flickered back into life.

It was just bizarre. Mauja crying. Mauja clinging to a stranger. Mauja then shouting at the stranger, and the stranger pushing him over until he lay in the sand, and then, she asked him to fight.

Laughter bubbled up in his throat, unbidden, unstoppable, shearing through the air with just the faintest hints of hysteria—gods, it was so fucking messed up.

It almost made sense, in some backwards way.

But who the hell walked around comforting strangers and then begging them for fights? He glanced up at the gray mare. Maybe they did things differently in the Rift. Maybe she was expecting some kind of ceremony, some kind of ritual, something he had no idea about and would mess up, and she would be disappointed and angry and he would've ruined something beautiful and sacred—

He drew in a quivering breath, and quick as he could—not as quick as he usually could've, given that this was fucking sand he was lying in—he rolled more onto his belly, forehooves digging into the wet ground as he hauled himself up. But once standing, he didn't stop there; his white back rose into the air, and his hind legs shot out towards her once, while he watched her with his head slightly turned. It was a relatively low kick, towards the region of her chest, because .. ouch, if he'd hit her on the nose?

Laceration, his mind whispered again, unbidden.

[ @Dacianna || Continues here. ]

somebody make me feel alive
and shatter me