A flickering light illuminated the room into which the prince now wandered, desperately seeking a distraction from his own thoughts. It had not been easy, his return to reality; wherever he roamed, he saw her face. Zarina tried to hide her memories from the stallion, tried to protect him from the times before - but despite her best efforts, he saw the mare everywhere. When he looked to the sky, he saw the gold of her eyes in the sun. When he looked to the trees, he saw the glittering of her mane in the sparkling Orangemoon light. She was everywhere, and she was nowhere, and he was at once smitten and petrified by the ghost of her memory.

He did not remember, not truly; the pictures that his companion painted were vivid, to be sure, but they did not augment his own memory. When Zarina offered a shred of his past, he clung to it, searching, reaching, wanting to find some scrap of it within himself, but no matter how hard he tried, how far he reached, his attempts were in vain. When he closed his eyes, he could see her face - but it was not his memory. It was Zarina's. At times, he thought he heard her voice, but it was not in his mind. It was in Zarina's, oddly and awkwardly transported into his mind.

The life that she portrayed was painful to see now, now that he had ruined it all and left those he had apparently once cared for shattered in his wake. He had a mate, a daughter, a brother; he had a home, and a family that loved him, even after all his mistakes and transgressions. But now... whatever he had done, however he had left them, it had been too much this time. Somehow, he had managed to destroy his life and forget about it in the process. The implications of it all were too much to bear, and he had spent his days since leaving the mare in a deep depression. Nothing that Zarina said could shake his angst, and every time she tried, the images simply piled up once more.

No. He needed to get away from his own thoughts.

Unfortunately, it is rather difficult to run from oneself. He had tried, of course, taking to the skies and shoving himself through the deep blue, trying to see just how fast he could go. He had run through the forest, felt the twigs of autumn scraping at his pelt as he sprinted by, welcoming the stinging pain, however temporary it was. He had even tried to see if he could fly high enough to touch the sun, as though Icarus might have held all the answers; and when he failed, as he had known he would, he had allowed his wings to tuck tightly to his body, free-falling in a dive that he knew he would save himself from, for he still hadn't the courage to face death.

And so here he was, lost and alone, searching for yet another way to forget. He had stumbled through the caves, not knowing what it was, exactly, that he was looking for, until he fell into the cavern with the flickering light and the sketches on the walls. At first, he didn't want to be interested in them: what right did he have, after everything, to express interest in anything at all? What was the point, when he had no one to share his interest with? Why should he bother, when he would probably just forget it all anyway? But, eventually, curiosity won out, as it always did.

He stepped closer to the walls, pacing slowly around the room, his muzzle tracing gently along the lines of the drawings, trying to decipher them. Th'orqui had been home to libraries aplenty, and these were the first written anything he had seen in years. Of course, he had seen them before, when the Heart Caves were first exposed to Helovia; but he didn't remember, and, to be honest, he wouldn't have wanted to. Somehow, finding them here, now, when he needed so desperately something new to cling to - it made him feel clean for the first time in days, as though this new discovery might prove to be his salvation.

"Speak."
--Zarina.--

@Chernobyl

Quilyan

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