Anger. It had filled him with its dangerously absolving tongues, burning the sorrow and guilt to ashy scars in his conscience. Heavy limbs, still weighted with the blame that his rage allowed his mind to ignore, had carried him unseeingly across Helovia. Long, pounding strides swept continuously, relentlessly, seeking some sort of relief from the fires that licked the insides of his chest. The incessant, monotonous movements sought reprieve from the flames before they consumed him.

So in some ill-planned, masochistic workings of his subconscious, he found his large, ivory hooves sending infinite ripples across the Halcyon Flats. The last place he had found some semblance of comfort— even bliss. A place of promise. A promise now shattered to the ravenous past that, with its insatiable hunger, indiscriminately consumes ours triumphs, failures, aspirations, and despairs.

But to the Elephant, who stared down at his ripple-warped reflection, this place of Sun’s promise had (in his simmering fury) morphed into a purgatory without horizon; a limbo of anguish. Whispered promises, revered caresses— they ballooned to the forefront of his thoughts like a sudden glare that blinds the eye.

And they were the spark to the smoldering embers.

A conflagration leapt to life in within him, filming his gaze with red rage. He was glad he was alone, without a soul in sight to witness or fall victim to the madness that overwhelmed him. Yet, he wasn’t— he needed to strike out, to feel the destructive conquest.

The furor ripped a trumpeting roar from his throat and his hooves exploded in frothy droplets as he reared and crashed repeatedly against the flats— against the mirror, against his reflection. His nostrils flared, unable to bring in enough oxygen to feed these angry flames. There was no outlet for this explosive rage, surely it would consume him—

A blinding wave of heat—

—And suddenly it left him, peeling right out of his massive chest in a fiery, volatile amorphous blob of outrage and magma. Except it was a form. A small elephant; his namesake.

The great stallion fell unceremoniously to all four hooves, ears straining and eyes wide while his sides heaved for more breaths than his nostrils could provide. “What…?” Confusion pulled the unfinished question from his lips, which quickly snapped shut as the flaming lava beast rounded on him.

Mild panic flared through him as he met the blazing pits that were the elephant’s eyes. The were livid, as was the entirety of the beast. It squared itself, getting ready to charge him, flaming ears wide and waving, “No!” The word, the command, the prayer was out of his mouth before he could stop it. The lava-elephant paused, hissing steam curling from his short legs.

He paid for his sins. He was saved.

But some sins haunt us no matter how much we pay.