All my life I’ve been searching for something

Fine was the final censure, and Enna was no longer a topic, no longer a bleeding hurt crossing over the boy’s mind – a secret, covert and furtive, resting on cloaks and daggers, nestled inside his armed and guarded soul. He could look beyond the trees, not back to Rikyn now, while the other boy brooded, while they left jagged little ripples of things lost and forlorn beside them – and a part of Erebos wanted to say, wanted to yell, wanted to shatter the unspoken void with I wish you’d never left, but couldn’t position the phrase beyond his mind. He didn’t want to wreck their fragile positions, their implied, tacit agreements, forgoing the mentioning of departures and wishes; because Rikyn would likely utter some transgression, Erebos would bristle, and they’d return to heated moments and overbearing instances. He didn’t want that.
 
You too, you know. I’m almost always around. There it was again, echoing past his ear drums in a wake of devilish, incendiary thoughts, and he swallowed the statement back down again, so that it rested firmly along his throat, biding its time, wrapping its way around his vocals. He could remember so many occasions where it’d been the truth, and they’d gallivanted across so many sanctions and sections of the mountains, pummeling into snow mounds, riding the waves of enthusiasm and flourishing promise, so many beliefs, so many certitudes lacquered across their cores. He’d been by his side when they ran from wolves, when they chased down Gods, when they felled beasts, when they wounded their prides – and absent in other declarations, when he’d fought monsters in storms, when he’d felt completely, wholly alone, when the world threatened to devour him from the inside out. The prince didn’t yearn for it to be such a way any longer, but it wasn’t his choice, and it wasn’t his decision. It would rest solely upon Rikyn, who’d burned bridges with the summits, with the Reaper, when he’d tried to steal from another.
 
Perhaps that had been the moment where the bay boy had shed all of his former glories and ties. Maybe he never wanted to venture there again, into his old home, where the ghosts of Illynx’s triumphs and the rapier sound of Deimos’ hooves echoed across the chambers.
 
This land has seems to have a way of pulling everyone back together, at some point. The scion nearly burst – he’d been silent for too long, stewing, concocting, imagining a time and a place where his best friend had always been at his side, and they’d condemned the world together, consigning it to oblivion with the perilous force of their combined might, fortitude, strength, and tenacity. Then, it came without any more thought, swift and searing along his tongue before he could stop it, before he could think and dwell any further on if he should grant it voice, the eager, keen, ardent smile polished across his mouth as his words simmered into the icy realm. “You could always come home.” His eyes too, segmented solely on Rikyn, strong and powerful, demanding, wanting, for the way things used to be, could be, again. No matter how many times the Sun God had told him to stop, he still begged, pleaded, and coveted for the lifelines of yesteryear.

(something never comes)

erebos

never leads to nothing—nothing satisfies

but I’m getting close