The journey is ceaseless. Knox has traveled far from the point of his rejection, and now leaves the site of his madness, covered in a blood it is good no one else can see. The tips of the innocent victim's wings drag on the ground and make faint traces in the snow, but his cloak covers him in the night and leaves few other traces of his being. Hoofprints, blood drips, and the faint lines of feathers of the dead.

The hunter's mind is numbed to the point where he is unable to be thankful, but he knows that he would be if he were just able to shake himself awake. Still he follows Dovev's lead as if a child, galloping beneath the same sky that betrayed him as it changes its form.

Stars burst through the blanket of black. Here, faint traces of grass poke through the now. The hunter's breath is labored as he tears across the expanse towards the Basin. Why is he headed here? He does not have time to think, cannot find his own mind well enough to answer the question. Dovev is hungry. This is where the hunt leads the monster, and this is where he must go next: wherever the dead take him.

The sky seems to explode with color that Knox cannot remember seeing. Dovev, he knows, has never encountered such painted beauty. The Aurora darts overhead, making patterns of light that defy the horrors that have just occurred.

But even that beauty cannot make the hunter forget the taste still on his lips. And the heavy weight of wings upon his back is oppressive. Dovev wears them as a trophy, Knox as a reminder of what he has already begun to forget: he is a murderer once more.

Is he? Is he the murderer? Can he not blame his ancestor for this foul crime, for the feathers pressed to his sides?

This was you. This was right.

The words come again to his mind in deep tones. They are a dark mantra, an insistence of his guilt: How dare you forget, how dare you forget, you cannot forget, this was you, this was right, you have killed, you have drunk, you have stolen, beaten, battered, and so you shall again.

Thou
Shalt
Kill.

The figures over the next rise, shallow as it is, are creatures in golden tones. Even the deer, clearly a companion by the way he trails beside the other, has something delicate in his deep brown hue. For a second, Knox feels his heart lurch at what he has lost. Not his sanity, not his goodness, but his bonded. Where is Manhattan? Had he driven her away?

When had he lost her, and how had he not noticed?

There is a hunger in him that stems from Dovev, but this is not the place to satisfy his urges. Dovev wants something else, now, and it is something he does not expect to find here. What he wants is the heat of a stranger beneath him--something to defile.

And this stallion, well... he isn't exactly the murderer's type.

Let us move on, the murderer issues, jolting back his own steeled features and turning away from the pair. His steps are high and heavy, crushing fireflies beneath them. This scene is a peaceful one, where two murders, perhaps so many more, do not belong.

The gold and his elven friend are lucky this night: just this once.


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[[for Thranduil--sorry he ended up just passing through. Knox was in the form of Dovev and cloaked, so no one will/would see him. Good thing Dovev's not gay though? :x Others, join this lovely thread that Hawk started!]]