The world distanced itself around me; it was just me and the road ahead, yet somehow even that felt outside of my reach. Shadows parted upon my approach and half of me wondered if it was because of who I had been or who I’d become. I was neither a King nor a Monster, so perhaps I was a mixture of the two. Perhaps that’s why I found myself hovering again in the Deep Forest hoping that it would bring me a sense of myself that I had been missing since returning from the Wilds. How queer it was that such agony and isolation had managed to leave an impression on me. Cruel shades of grey leapt from the yawning depths of the dark forest and I had no qualms about moving alongside them and relaxing into them until I too had hidden myself from the brightness beyond.

Tall pines and old, twisted oaks looked down upon me from above but I found no solace within their gaze where I had once found comfort. I could not blame them for their hesitancy, after all I’d been received oh so well by just about everyone else. A small smile crept onto my lips and though it felt more natural than the rising feeling of shame that threatened to drown me in emotion, I halted it in its path nonetheless. Though time was supposed to heal all wounds, I felt that I carried far too many for it to ever heal them all. I’d witnessed the emptiness that death could impale upon the heart and I’d dealt with the ache of longing for a friend who was as gone as the summer heat. I’d suffered from the hatred I’d erected for my own monument after abandoning my own daughter and I’d felt the tinge of jealousy after knowing I’d been replaced on the throne. The emotions all surged under my skin like a riptide threatening to burst through my earthly seams. I was like a porcelain doll, so fragile and complacent until dropped…

As dusk fell over the forest, I let it come with no intentions of returning to the Edge until morning. I felt all too natural sleeping beneath the stars under a canopy of red and yellow leaves. In fact, I’d barely slept since welcoming the Edge back into my life. Somehow, I felt as though my tired eyes had been waiting for this exact moment for the past year. As I gazed around, I couldn’t help but chuckle lightly. Tamira’s face was everywhere. It was intoxicating. It was painful. But most of all, it was the moment I knew that my heart was breaking all over again.

“I don’t know how to figure out who I am.”

Oh how her words still echoed in my mind. She had been suffering, questioning, and searching for so much… I had lost her before I could even truly get her to understand. Now she was gone from the mortal world and I was left with the fragments of her memory. How weak I’d been, still looking for her in all that I did. She had replaced my being with her own and now I felt consumed. It was a dangerously thin veil between sanity and insanity and I couldn’t help but raise it occasionally, wondering what it felt like to lose myself as she had done in the shadow of Myriad. I was a sick man- that was certain. But I needed to replace her in my heart. I had to be rid of her if I ever wanted to find my way back to my past in order to begin the healing.

Just when I thought that silence had sheathed the forest and its jagged edges, sounds of movement rendered me still. My heart was not heavy with fear though, at least not like it had been as a rogue in the Wilds. It was almost hysterical how tame Helovia was in comparison to the lands beyond. When I had once thought to be tense and suspicious, I was now serene and perhaps a bit curious. While my attentions were divided between seeking out the disturbance and avoiding it, a child-like vision appeared from the darkness, her eyes wide and innocent suggesting her obvious fear. I didn’t know whether to scoff at her escapades or greet her accordingly; of course the father in me admonished the latter and I smiled knowingly at the girl. “It seems to me that you’re a bit young to be so far from home.” I could smell the dry desert of the Dragon’s Throat upon her skin, the very same I had once sensed upon Kri the Resolute. I wondered if the fiery little mare still resided within the Throat or better yet, still called herself their Sultana. I was afraid to wonder about the changes affecting other regions of Helovia since my absence and decided that asking would only bring about more questions… and answers that I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear.

“What’s your name child?” The words felt gruff even to my own ears. Maybe it was because I had desired peace and quiet, but then again… had I ever acquired peace and quiet in Helovia? It was one perpetual meeting after another, each face blurring into the next until they all made one giant spectrum of names and features that I could no longer decipher at will. Everyone was willing to meet one another despite previous conflict, relationship, friendship- anything. It didn’t matter if you killed their father some years ago, they had something to say to you and you had to stick around for it no matter what… I guess that’s what we call civility, but I just thought it irritating. “Better yet, why do I find myself in your company?” I bristled at the edge in my voice and immediately regretted how, for lack of a better term, monstrous I sounded. If I’d wanted to come off like a pompous ass and get away with it, I guess I needed to glue a horn to my head and swear myself to the Basin.

It’s not that she was an abdominal creature, as plain as she seemed, but I still took offense the company of children since the estrangement of my own daughter. I missed her dearly, but I feared that even reaching out to her would be useless in the face of all that I’d done to her. I was even more afraid to find what kind of mare she was now… I hoped that she’d followed in Tamira’s footsteps at least. Really, I only hoped she was still alive and well… The kind of pain I would feel if I found out otherwise might just… well it might just kill me. As I swung my head back around to the small girl before me, I grimaced. She was just a reminder of Essetia, only less appealing. However, could you blame me for thinking my own kin to be marvelously striking? Essetia and her ivory eyes and strange badger face? She was the epitome of beauty in my eyes and no beast in their right mind would ever convince me otherwise.

This child, though interesting in her own way, did not fare well in my opinion. Come to think of it, as she sat there looking at me with child-like wonder (all pun intended), I noticed her consistent sniffling. It was every few seconds; three or four breaths and she would sniffle and then breathe and then sniffle. It was absolutely irksome. “A girl so young, out so late by herself… and sick? Please tell me I have discovered you by mistake- that you are lost and cannot find your way back home. If not, then the Gods help me, I will march your ass right back to where you came from.” I gazed at her now, with cold authority in my eyes. If Essetia had done such a thing, I would have yelled so long and hard that her ass would have sailed to the heavens.