Ashamin felt her leave just as he registered her lingering beside him. He wanted to reach out but was too feeble, too wounded, too hurt. He let his head fall, floating on the surface of the water where he held it in suspension.

"I had a dream you were real..." Ashamin murmured quietly towards the mare, unsure if she would here. He didn't know much of anything now, not much of anything but how the pain was dulling and spread. The haruspex felt himself growing colder even as his forehead seemed to burn. Was this a fever dream again, then? He was awake, but Tiamat, she still wasn't here. She was just something he was wanting to see as his end drew closer.

It was foolish to ask a figment for help, just as it had been foolish to fight one. He remembered the snakes and the owl's test. Lochan... Lochan must be real, then, in some way. Maybe not hatched yet, but real. Ashamin no longer paid attention to Tiamat--she was leaving, speaking, something inconsequential. His head was lifted and his black eyes were searching, desperate, for the last sign of his companion's egg. That, at least, had to have been real.

He tried to straighten up but even that was too much. He couldn't remember what the egg looked like, anymore. Had it been brown? And what size... it could have been any of the stones beneath the water's surface. Ashamin felt himself giving up and in; he turned his features back to the water again, letting himself fall with exhaustion.

He heard Tiamat's return before she was at his side, and his eyes opened in mere slits. "Going to be alright..." he said quietly, wondering if it was true. The dream-mare was doing something, trying to put something on him, he could tell. He blinked at the scattered leaves floating on the surface of the water. What had she wanted him to do? Eat them? He felt petulant, like a young child. He remembered his father trying to teach him things as a colt, and he remembered even more clearly stubbornly refusing, and the stern scolding that often followed--the occasional lash of a tail. Ashamin grumbled, nosing the leaves and shoving them away. They wouldn't do him any good, he didn't think. Not now, not when he was like this. "I don't want to eat this, TiamAHHHH!"

The pain was sudden and unexpected--as injured as his leg was, he still had it in him to kick out with it, tearing the wound further and causing fresh blood to spurt up towards the blue mare. "You're killing me!" Ashamin screamed, his eyes so wide that the faintest trace of white could be seen at their lining. He snapped, his white teeth closing before her face, his words coming out as a horse neigh between them. "You'll never be a healer if you can't help a simple man die!"

The effort of speech, the simple subtlety of movement, was too much. He threw his face back in the water, letting it rest half above the surface and half sunken. His hindquarter twitched, sending streams of blood through the rippling water and fish chasing after and away from him. His long tail lifted, just barely, and fell to the surface with a snap, stinging the bites upon it.

He felt everything dim. He clenched his teeth, pulled back his large black ears. It hadn't been fair. Slowly he looked back to the mare where she stood trying to help, the movement of the black orbs imperceptible.

"I'm sorry," Ashamin said to a mare he thought could never exist, a mare he loved for that false reality. "Try again," he said quietly, his rage subsiding, his heart slowing. "It's going to be alright, Tiamat."

It's going to be alright, dreamgirl.

"" ""
[[@[Tiamat]]]

ASHAMIN

Come again, closer,
and heed my forgiveness.

This is our mantra of pain