everybody wants to rule the world

Her voice is unsteady, her eyes tired, her face hollowed. She looks like she's seen a million wars, witnessed the loss of a billion lives— lived a billion lives, over and over, and every single one, she has felt some great pain. She felt every sharp breath from crying over tragedy after tragedy, felt the agonizing pain of abandonment, the exhilaration of love, the stabbing emptiness of betrayal. And she has grieved, mourned, over her own story, for she has not yet come to the final act of her gruesome tale.

I think I want to cry, with the way my knees shake and eyes moisten, but I cannot— I stopped being able to cry long ago, when all my tears had been wept on the nights spent alone, without Sabre, without Mother without Volterra. Instead I stand with a trembling lip and unsteady legs, sucking in air like it's all I know how to do, it's all I've ever done. I want to say something to her, to rush forward and crumble before her hooves and weep the way I did on the night we first met. But I simply stand, with upturned brows and a sorrowful expression.

We have both changed, molded and twisted by what life has done to us, I do not know how to reconnect with her, how to act now that I am less of a helpless child and more of a— helpless teen? Melancholic mess, an isolated and forgotten son of a man who has not even given him a second thought (does Volterra remember me?). Perhaps no time at all has passed since I took my first harrowing steps out of Helovia, maybe too much time has passed. I should apologize for leaving, for forgetting that I wasn't so entirely alone, that there are still people who care for me, but so selfishly I left.

I do not know how to answer, do I lie (I'm doing well), do I tell the truth (my mental state is in ruins and Mother has left Helovia, I am deeply emotionally and physically scarred from the things she did to me, but I still feel grossly attached to her). What do I say? I open and close my mouth, thinking thoroughly on what it is I tell her (don't lie). "I've... been." I've existed painfully, dragged my heavy soul back into Helovia and found myself purposeless and practically worthless— some broken king without a throne to sit, without a crown to display, without a pedestal to be raised or people to raise him. He is not a king anymore, just a man. "My mother has left, but I cannot help but feel... lost without her? She was nothing but cruel to me, but I do not know who I am when she is not here to remind me. I went looking for her, I must be mad! I- I looked for my abusive mother, because I cannot remember who I am when she is gone. Isn't that fucked up?" I mutter to myself, knowing that my eyes yearn to cry, to sob and let me be a mess, but I cannot (there is too much sorrow clinging to us already).

But I need Mother, I need her to beat me over the head and scream of my uselessness, my pitiful state of being and my weakness. I cannot compel myself to be some mighty king when she is not here to push me, to shove and kick, to make me do something about my worthlessness. And if she does not come back, who will take her place?

"And what of you? The Throat?" I don't ask of Volterra, letting my throat tighten and teeth clench before his name can spill out. He may have tried (and for a moment, succeeded) to earn my respect, but it has been washed away in the months I have not seen him (it's my own fault, but I will blame him anyway). Maybe I'll have to follow the trail of all new spawn, watching the signature skulls surface on a hundred new children from all over Helovia. And where will he be? Fornicating at the head of the trail, producing another one.

"Talk."