but somewhere here in between the city walls of dyin' dreams

Denne polka, denne får du aldri nok av
Av denne sangen er du kommet
til denne sangen skal du bli

His heart was a forge.

It felt near bursting, hot and heavy, thick with fear, with water, lungs rattling wetly with each exhalation. Please—

He was an angel with no wings, no halo; he was a trick of the light.
He was an angel of smoke, with gilt light for wings; he was a trick of the mind.

He couldn't save anyone.

The ocean heaved around him, pulled ceaselessly in to the shore—pulled ceaselessly back, into its own grave. It rose nearly past his rump, stroked down his sides with cold, wet hands, and passed him, nearly pitching him over each time it came. And still, he did not move. Glacia's weight being gone from his back was almost like having wings.

—and like having a rock tied to his slowly sinking, fighting heart.

A blizzard strong enough to devour a wildfire.

Salt water ran down his face in gentle rivulets, the wind a cold and wicked thing biting straight through his thin fur, and still he did not move. He couldn't save anyone, because he did not exist.

He was too tired to even look about himself, and still his mind kept whispering you lost her, you lost her, you lost her, you lost—

But if he had lost her, why was she leaning against his side, drenched head slung over his withers, her voice whispering wetly, "Dad...."? If she was dead, how could her ghost touch him—if she was lost to the sea, how could she be warm?

If she was beyond his reach, and beyond her mortal pain, how could she cry?

The salt of her tears merged with the salt of the water—but her tears were warm against his cold shoulder, and his aching eyes slid drunkenly to the side. She was there. His girl was there, crying and sobbing and clinging to him like she had when he'd carried her through the sea—

"Glacia," he whispered, his voice raw and rugged, body shivering as the ocean tried to rock them both; was it angry of having been robbed of its prey? Or was it telling them to drag their sorry selves back to shore?

The broad line of silver sands wasn't very far away, after all. Surely he could walk there, put one striped hoof in front of another and get his corpse up on land before he froze to death, or the sea rose in all its fury? Surely he could do it?

But he stood with his knees locked and trembling in the water, unsure of if he could even think about moving without collapsing. His muscles burned as much as his lungs—as much as his heart.

"Glacia," he said again, through her sobbed apologies; strands of his white hair clung to her face as she hid within the mess of his mane. To touch her seemed as possible as moving mountains, to command his neck to bend, and his muzzle to rest against her shoulder—so he didn't, just stood there, passively facing the shore even as his gaze lay sideways, on her.

"Glacia..." he said a third time, because what else could he say? What other words could somehow encompass all the love he felt, all the relief, all the things left unmourned..? And that was why his voice was a ragged whisper, impassive and detached, frozen as the heart in which it had spawned.

[ @Glacia -- flow's great <333 also I'm sorry he's being useless .. xD ]

man, I ain't changed, but I know I ain't the same