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It has been a long time.
A long time since he has been here, a long time, it feels, since he has been anywhere. More than a year since he put Helovia at his back--more than a year since he conquered the border of the Threshold, Aylin and Manhattan his steady companions, and headed home. Home to Isilme, the land of his father, the land of lost promises. And then, after so long searching for some sign of life, for something more than the dark destruction of the shadows, he journeyed further. Back to another home, the first home: the home of the Old Country, where his ancestors had been born and where all but one of them had died. That was a home of sorrow: of crumbling stone castles and haunting, bearded creatures blending into the woodwork. The home of imps and deceit, of death and so much costly revenge.
But now, Knox, the son of the Sentinel, has returned. After so long a time away, after over a year of aging, over a year of growing stronger in body and mind, he has come home. He walks into the forest of the threshold with a cloak of light and shadow draped over the images of him and his companion. He stands and strides tall, Manhattan at his side, eternally his bonded.
Aylin is gone. She is lost to some dark night, some silent Orangemoon wind. And Knox cannot bear to think of her--cannot bring himself to contemplate the absence of his delicate, kind-hearted friend. More than a year brought them close, and then one silent evening tore them apart.
He thinks he will never know why. His ancestors tell him, all in hushed, practiced, tamed voices, that he should not wonder. Wondering leads to knowing, and knowing is the pain of it all. But they are nothing but facts: memories of a past he lives in the present. He becomes through them, and under the light of these dying oak and maple trees, a shadow.
Manhattan trots at his side, the corpse of a bird betwixt her black jowls. Blood and poison drip from her fangs. She senses her bonded's buried concern as he stops and lifts herself. Her black paws, rough and calloused from what seems to her to have been a century of walking, press eagerly against his forearms. She offers him the remains of the sparrow--so small, so delicate, so hopelessly deceased--but he declines with a gentle click of his tongue and a mental assurance: finders keepers, Hatta.
Perhaps he has simply lost his appetite for some things. It is enough for Manhattan to take herself away from her master. She bites down, pushing the bones through the flesh and scattering feathers in her wake. Their only trail: an evidence of death.
Up ahead, the light changes. Knox catches sight of orange on green, of floating creatures of the sea and flaming beasts of the wood. In his mind, his father chuckles at the sight of a deer.
Duh yuh rumumber the time that busturd set me un fire?
Yes father, I remember.
And duh yuh rumumber the picturr uf me in yur head, sun, of yur futhur, the black stag?
Yes father, I do.
Yuh wuld huve been proud of me, sun.
I still am, Roanne.
The mind quiets. Knox watches, his blue eyes empty, his heart cold. He is home now, he has come to terms with who he is, and who his ancestors were. Manhattan stifles a growl at her master's command: she is hesitant, fearful of returning to a land where she saw so much horror--horror at the hooves of her master's family, beneath the paws of her own sister Loretta. Out there, in Isilme, in the Old Country, the horror had a terrifying face. Here she knows it appears as a friend. Knox has only just learned this: only come to find who he must hate, and how few he is able to trust. This is a lesson he has learned out of necessity, and one he has learned well.
The pair stand together, Manhattan close to her beloved to remain under his cloak, and Knox watching the interactions of the pair of emerald Pegasi with a tilted head. He notes the hostility of the smaller of the pair--the hawk in the trees, the heavy accent that drips from the bandaged mare. And through it all, through his perception that filters through the eyes of so many ancient ones long dead, Manhattan watches him with care. She is worried he will forget what time, travel, and a friend have all taught him. She is worried that here, in this threshold to the land they were born in, he will once more become cold.
Then again: it has been a long time.
—
[[ ((!!!)) @[Xira], @[Laedere]; Permission to cloak, full permissions for Xira.]]
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