The hunter is plagued by the stress of being the captor of a sick and twisted bitch.

He has had terrible days- truly awful weeks and even months in his short life- that have brought deep and stinging pain to fill the hidden hollows of his breast. But this week, these days, in the wake of his mother and brother's murder, in the scattered light reflected off of just another pool of blood, he feels hate. Manhattan once would help, but today she does not help. Today she fights with him, growling, spitting, sending terrors flying from her feet and wretched, shouted words from her mind to his own. Today she is as upset as she has ever been, disappointed in her master and screeching, slamming insults against his thick, young skull. He has made a fool of himself—told too many of his secrets to unworthy souls, and whored himself out to a Goddess that will give him no more than a strike of blindness and a streak of errand yet impassioned rage.

The meager spoils of the hunt, a starved rabbit with a broken neck, hang from Manhattan's jaws, dripping with blood and poison. She will not give it to him today, she will not share the victory or pleasure of their efforts. He strikes the ground in wicked anger, threatens to leave her behind here in the deep woods, alone to wander until she trips and falls on the crow-picked corpse of his father.

And she agrees.

The only friend the hunter has ever had turns away and runs into the woods, trailing rabbit's blood that hisses with poison and the black ghosts of a Sentinel's fears, and suddenly Knox cannot bear to be himself anymore. Little defective colt fades away and the memory of the great leader of the Mystic Woodlands roams the very forest where he died.

In the darkness, hindered by the thick haze of a cursed blindness, Roanne navigates faintly familiar woods with his nose pressed to the earth. Every step is one made with care, every snap of a twig in the distance a cause for alert. The sentinel smother's the pain of his son. It is for his own good. It is out of love.

He wanders through a dark forest, aching to transform as he once could, carrying himself with a sort of solemnity that rests easily upon the shoulders of the dead. It is strange for the Sentinel to think that he has fallen—to realize that every step is a borrowed one and every breath a twisted gift. It is has son that has done this for him, for all of his forefathers.

Wretched as Knox may feel, as much hate for himself as he may hold, Roanne sees the gentle kindness of his son. Pride moves him onwards, through the wood, away from Manhattan's cruel words and towards the distant light. In the distance, a silhouette of a mare looms; the faint sounds of upset swing through the midday air. He sees a long shadow, a silhouette cast into the depths of the wood.

Evangeline?

No. He is a fool, he tells himself. A fool seeing ghosts, wanting old memories long since lost to the torment of the shadows. He shakes his head and lowers it once more to the earth, carrying himself through darkened paths and closer to the mare. Each step betrays a difference—an elegant horn revealed with a shift of his muddled view, a lighter, younger tone of her voice.

Still he approaches, still he lets his head shift towards her direction and his nostrils flare to take in her scent. The familiar, salty scene of tears hits him as he pulls close to her; without realizing, his bridled features reach forward, only inches from her form. Old, deep tones sound out in a sort of wistful way. Inside, the huddled hunter hides from hurt. Bridled beneath the boughs of birches, Roanne shines one more time.

"Mim? Are yuh alright?"

The sentinel is rarely one to be fooled. Perhaps the years and evenings spent in darkness have taught him the importance of observance, or perhaps he has always been this way. It is strange for the Sentinel now to see Janos' memories so clearly, and to feel at times as if they are still his own. He was cursed once, made to be a different beast, and now he can at last unlock the living mind of the creature he was before.

And so he catches the quiver of a lie in her voice, and so he shifts immediately to act. His soft nose reaches out to touch her wherever it may fall; he reaches with poor precision out to the soft black of her young coat. In his own eyes, she is young—it is so strange to think that within him, his son would be younger than he.

She asks of him a question that once would have been simple. On any other day the hunter would interject, but today he buries himself beneath his shroud of loss. Unsure what else to say or do, Roanne introduces himself in the only way he knows how. "I um Roanne the Sentinul," the black fresian murmurs kindly. There is no need to speak louder, not when he stands so close to her. From his own black lips, a question falls easily. It seems that even death cannot stop the Sentinel's curiousity. "I know only thut yuh are nut fine, but I wun't pressure yuh. Tull me mim, whut is yur name?" His bridle shifts across his face as he speaks, and his long, tightly curled tail brushes softly against the dirt of the unfamiliar forest. No, this grave is not home, but it is as close as he thinks he will ever be.

The Sentinel is suddenly affronted with emotion that he is not sure how to handle. A mare he's never met, strikingly similar to his one true confidant—and she knows him. He wants to tell himself it is coincidence and convince himself he has to be wrong. Then he can push away the upset and hurt, forget the pain he feels.

The Sentinel's worst days dawn upon him with swift and and cruel justice. He remembers how he ran from the shadows he should have fought, remembers how he let himself be tricked and swayed by Mandrake's foul heart—he remembers knowing he would die and watching it all happen with quiet acceptance.

He remembers wanting to die

It is, he thinks, the worst thing one can recall. He pulls further from her, though she has already parted from his touch, and paws nervously at the ground. His head shakes back and forth with upset and obsession, his golden eyes roll as they had so few times before to shine blue. His features shudder, his form shifts and changes to that of his very own son. Knox stands before the mare, Aylin, as he has learned, in a state of desolation.

But isn't everyone tired, and isn't everyone sad? Knox knows what Manhattan would say to him now. That he cannot hide from his feelings, that such a coldness will turn him black inside. He must live through being tortured someday, because somehow, so does everyone else. Recovered from blindness but not from pain, Knox looks upon the mare before him with an inconsolable aching in his chest and still speaks. "Roanne the Sentinel was my father—he died almost two years ago when I was born," the hunter informs her cleanly, carefully. Manhattan is not hear to hold him back, to usher him into silence, and so he speaks freely and openly. "I inhabit his form some days, to remind myself of who he held dear; his land, his people, they became more a part of him than I could ever have been." His blue eyes wash over the midday scene. He realizes with discomfort just how close Roanne has taken him to this mare, and yet he does not pull away. The bridle about his features, now a flat and healed white, cages in his darkly mysterious yet gentle expression. His neck arches back and turns, revealing the dapples crossing over his features and the sway of his thick curled mane. There is a pause, a sort of stillness in the air as he listens to silence. Silence of a bonded gone away. "I am Knox," he says at last, hoping to explain. "Your mother must be Evangeline. No one else ever felt so strongly about my father as she," Knox nickers, maintaining his father's low volume. Mournful within, Roanne calls out to his son and to the fading memory of his own lost chestnut companion. Words fall from Knox's lips like fading summer rain, following a strange natural course beyond his control: "She was his everything."


"—"

The hunter feels a quick, burning sensation as the mare's muzzle collides with his own finely chiseled features. It is rare that he feels another's touch; after all the time he spends alone aside from with Manhattan, he does not have the opportunity for contact. He has never before thought it might be something he needs. Its instances have been rare reactions from the soon to be dead or his own cruel mother; most recently, the sting of the sensation had come from his foul encounter with Adrixaura.

But there is something different about Aylin's touch, and something different about this day. The hunter cannot stop hearing Manhattan's thoughts coming back to haunt him, her insults borne of her love for him, ruddying with the darkness of her hate. He knows he has taught her to feel this cold and awful unkindness, he has given her this capacity. He wonders if he has ruined her.

He hears Aylin calling for Roanne to stay, but the Sentinel has long since gone. "I cannot claim to be my father, nor can I claim to feel what he felt," Knox answers in the only way he can. He sounds cold, like a machine. He wonders why he is like this when so many others are not. He sees the emotion in Aylin's green eyes, eyes that he pulls from a memory falling from Roanne's shattered heart, eyes that he knows are her mother's, and wonders if his eyes are void of such light. Are they cold and unfeeling as he feels? Does he show any life inside of him, any sign that his heart still beats?

When she pulls away he expects relief from the pressure to reciprocate her emotions, but instead he sees her choking back tears. He can sense her wanting to come closer, but something keeps her at bay. What is it that makes him so hard to relate to? What is it that made her call for the Sentinel, a dead stallion who she'd never even known, when he stands alive and well before her? Is he that awful of a beast?

He wants Manhattan back. He wants the soft brush of his companion's black fur against his cannons, he wants the familiar sensation of wind against his young body as he runs by her side chasing game. He wants her back because she is the only being through which he can feel, the only beast that tries to understand him. And he has hurt her, he has sent her away. The pain that wells within him is very real and strong.

Knox pushes forward. His body moves to collide with hers, to fall against it and into it, perhaps to understand the sensation of being cared for, perhaps to understand care at all. He lets himself fall apart in front of an almost stranger, lets himself whinny helplessly as he drapes his heavy head across her shoulders, as he turns his neck to brush his nose against her cheek and seek out comfort. This is touch, he tells himself. Touch is expression and understanding, the closest one can get to reaching out. It is opening oneself to vulnerability and exposing oneself in a way he has never before been able to do. Even now, he is not sure if this cathartic experience can be enough.

Because it still hurts. As he moves to bridge the gap between himself and Aylin, as his mind pulls at the distance between his bonded's mind and his own, as he lets out words in between choking breaths, ("I can't understand him, I can't be him! Feeling was bred and beaten from me, and I'm left to be this, this... husk! What am I? I feel nothing, I am nothing," he wails,) it all still hurts.

Emotions become words. The words are unchained and dramatic, but every last one is true; every last one is some scrap of a feeling felt once long ago and then locked away until now, when he has at last served his time and may go free. "How do you cope? In this world where so much hurts and so little brings us joy, how do you keep on living, and how do you not want to die?"

He speaks to her through his pain, through his loss and all that hurt which he has caused in his short life. He must start again, he thinks. Must repent for his sins in some way, must become something new. He has to embrace the ability to feel, and the understanding that he can be more than what he is.

If only he can know how.

The hunter welcomes her touch as she returns it; he is weak and vulnerable, too much of a victim to his grief to control himself anymore. He is shaking, feeling suddenly so very small as he stands pressed against her. He is still young, he realizes. He is but two years old with so much more life left to live.

But how is he supposed to live it if already, so young, he wishes to die? The question burns, stinging him and filling his chest with an uncomfortable tightness that he cannot explain. He still rests his head across Aylin, but moves now to watch the world around him shift in faint shades of black and green. Orangemoon has come and soon will make way for Frostfall. It has happened before and will happen again, but this time it is to be different. This winter will be colder, lonelier.

Lonelier? Yes, it would have to be. He didn't know when his companion would return to him, and even if she were to return to his side this very moment, he knows he would still feel the pain of her hate. He thinks back to what Manhattan said to him, and realizes faintly how true so many of her words may have been. He does not owe the moon his life, he owes her nothing.

He thinks, as he lays his head to rest across Aylin's warm black body, that he owes no one in the world right now but her. Like a child whose mother tells to him a story, he lifts his head, perks his ears, and watches closely with a curious light in his eyes. The hurt does not quite fade, not yet, but the confusion settles into an unsteady understanding. So it is the hope that someday life may improve, then, that keeps one alive through the suicidal night.

He had not seen such a hope in her, but he sees it now. Even with his head lifted from her back, he stands close enough to touch his chest to hers, to catch his stiff and sturdy leg in the space between her own. She says that he is her light.

He is her light.

A sensation he has never before felt crawls deep inside of him to nest, preparing for the coming storm. He is happy, he is scared. He feels at all, he supposes this is an accomplishment alone. But to be her light, what has kept her alive today, is that a responsibility he can handle?

He wonders, though, if she is not the same for him. He draws his face closer once more, letting his bridled cheek brush against hers and smudge the trails left by tears. "I've never been a light before," he murmurs, bewildered. His words float in deep and even tones towards her ears, resting just beside his soft, black lips. When he pulls back, it is only to look at her. He wants to see the mare whose life he saved in all her glory, if this is what glory even is. "I-I'm sorry to have made you cry," he says, sounding almost meek. From within his breast his child's heart has once again been rediscovered and begun to beat. He feels the blood rush through his veins, feels the heat spread through him and perhaps, even, to Aylin. He stands so close to her, still touching. He feels, well... a little. He feels a little better now. He could pull away if he wanted, he knows that.

But he doesn't want to.

The broken lets her wisdom sink in. She is not much older than he, but it seems she has gathered much more knowledge of one's emotional workings than he has ever even seen in any other. His eyes widen with a rising fear that he cannot escape, and his body tenses as she rests her head against his side once more. She tells him the benefits of crying, how it leaves only the good behind.

He has yet to cry, he has yet to see the good in himself. Is that it, then? Must he only shed a tear to emerge anew, reborn as a bright and shimmering being of feeling and understanding? Can he be golden? "Sometimes I feel there's nothing good left." He tries to cry and he cannot. Why can't I cry, he thinks, cursing himself? What is wrong with me?

The image of his father's powerful form, so like his own, yet stronger even as he carries it low and walks through blindness, returns to him. Flashes of an old home, of days spent in carefree bliss with Evangeline, of spitting fights and a deep understanding that he cannot hope to even mimic, fill his consciousness. He is soothed in some respects, but tortured in others. He does not think this kindness, this love that his father knew so well, can ever become his own. He has felt only the wretched influence of Dovev's lust and the apathetic mercilessness his mother force fed him at birth.

He watches the light of his bridle as it glows and plays off of Aylin's long, white mane and glitters at the edges of her horn. He lets his heartbeat slow and his mind ease at the warmth of her touch. His fear fades. In time he will be his own light. For now, he must let Aylin be his.

He pulls away slightly, but slowly and gradually so as not to upset her. He thinks of what Manhattan would say to him now, if she was here. Would she stop him? Perhaps. But as much as he hates himself for sending her away, he does not regret the freedom he has now to share. "Aylin, I'm... I'm different. I'm not just me, anymore. I'm everyone my father came from, everyone I've come from," he admits, his gaze focusing to catch her eyes. Her green eyes, just like her mother's. His features shift somewhat, just slowly enough that she might take the faint shifting images in. Only his eyes, his bridle, faint markings and scars, alter as his face changes. "In the hearts of all of my ancestors, I still can't find the good," he goes on, his voice steadied by old confidence and an even heart. "And... I know that they were good, some of them. So even knowing all they know, feeling to some extent all that they feel, why am I like this?" His questions are perhaps ones with no answers, perhaps ones she cannot help him with. He sighs, heavily, but feels bolstered at least by his calm. Somehow he has settled and relaxed enough to ask of a near stranger (but is she really a stranger) what he has wondered all his life:

"Aylin, why do I feel so cold?"

—

The broken says nothing to the dark mare, he only watches. The grip of her words on his mind is strong, and he doesn't allow it to falter. She commands him to stop, and in the instant his features stop to settle on his own. His mane flutters in the light breeze, his eyes brim with the manifestation of pain.

He realizes he has not thanked her—as he listens to her speak, speak ultimate truths that echo in the confines of his breast, he thinks about all she has dared to say that he has not. And she is right, every word she speaks is truth and wisdom. In the recesses of his mind, Roanne reminds him of an important fact: Aylun is hur muthur's daughtur.

And so he says it, letting his words strike open air, but not before turning away from her completely. "Thank you, Aylin. You are right, and... I will look. Maybe I'll find something in me I didn't know was there before." Is it hard for him to say to her face? He isn't sure; he is never quite sure.

As he turns away from her completely to sigh into the open air, he smiles slightly, faintly. It is a sad sort of smile, but an upturn of the lips nonetheless. Perhaps there is a slight spot of wet stinging his cheek, darkening a line across the delicate markings of his dapples and washing away impurity. Perhaps it is simply a splatter of the newly beginning drizzling rain seeping through the canopy.

Whatever it is, it brings him peace. The darkness has begun to settle, and with the shadow has come rain. It starts slow and soft, a simple pattering of a sky's tears against earth, but hastens its pace until it falls steadily. He looks back to Aylin, the rain quickly disguising the faint trace of a tear and soaking his thickening coat. His mane plasters against his features, tangling across and beneath the firm straps of his bridle.

"Come on, let's get out of the rain," he says over the sound of it, calling back to where she stands still only a few strides away. He closes his eyes, letting the water rush over him and picturing in his mind's eye the map of the woods where he grew up. His eyes snap open at the memory of a place, hoping at the same time that Manhattan has thought the same as himself. He starts to walk forward, through the woods and towards the small, peaceful glade at the edge of the forest where the trees bend low cover the sky. "I... I know a place."

The broken feels strange. Having not thought about the Goddess of the Moon, his shade-bound mistress, it is odd to be reminded of her in such an indirect fashion. Aylin speaks of father earth- the very father earth who guard's Knox's own home with his immortal life. How is it that Knox has never thought to appreciate a goddess as kind and forgiving as the Earth's own king? He has grown, still grows, in the Earth God's domain and never once bowed in his shadow, never once let losse a prayer for the kindest god of them all.

He thinks, then, that perhaps the rain is a sign. Father earth's tears, Aylin had called it. And what are tears? He has known so little for so long, but today he learns that, at the very least.

You let all the bad out when you cry and then all that's left is good

So that means that this rainstorm is in its very own way an expelling of the bad. The Gods share that foul nature, but so too do they share the good left behind. They share the responsibility, dividing its elements and then tending for those below. He feels, very suddenly, quite sorry for having thought so little of the other gods. A slipped whisper springs from betwixt his lips; a soft sigh of exaltation. "Yes, I do." The rain is, for the first time, a gift.

And when the grove appears before them, surrounding their destination, Knox feels his heartbeat quicken. "Come on," he calls to her, turning to look back as he tries to duck beneath the low hanging canopy that crosses over the outcropping of rock. Beneath the rock a small hollow hidden by the low branches is formed, shadowed by the land resting above. Here is where he had spent so many days as a colt, teaching Manhattan all he knew and letting her do the same for him. It is smaller than he remembers, but still warm, and still safe. The familiar scent of rabbit's blood comes from a recently dug hole and fills his nose, and though he hungers he pushes the need aside. It is Manhattan who he seeks now.

Manhattan, who lies alone and hurt at the hollow's edge. He calls to her now, a soft nicker spinning from his lips.

I love you, he tells her. I'm sorry.

And having never heard the words before, she runs to greet him as if nothing had ever come between them, knowing, too that nothing ever will again. She takes no note of Aylin, pressing her head insteaD affectionately against Knox's cannons. He whinnies, a light, laughing sound, and turns to Aylin.

"Aylin, meet Manhattan," he says with a flick of his tail and a fall to a resting position by her side. He thinks for a moment as Manhattan turns to look at the kind mare, thinks of what she truly is to him. He waits, expecting Manhattan to protest, but the mutt says nothing ill of Aylin. There is, after all, nothing ill to be said. He takes up chorus again, his words combatting the heavy sound of rain falling on the floor of the woods overhead. "She is my light."

The broken is no fool. As he slowly learns to feel, he quickly catches on to when the emotions become present in his newest (or is she his first?) friend. Ever hogging the limelight, Manhattan refuses to leave him be. Any other day, one not comprised of an afternoon of such turmoil, healing, and hurt, he might have scolded her for her ill manners, but today he thinks first. He realizes who it was that taught her such poor behavior, and who it was still that had left her alone in these woods to face the rain and cold.

No, he decides, he will not stop her now. He lets her have her moments of a pleasant reunion, lets her wrap her forepaws around his neck and lick the last remaining specks of salt from his dappled cheek. She searches his mind for the images of where he has been, and he sends them in return, along with snippets of Aylin's own wisdom.

Knox flinches as the upset radiates from Aylin. There is something on her mind, he is sure of it. As long as he has been alive, he has been cold and calculating; watching for signs of emotion, what had once been for him the most elusive of beasts, has become a skill. Manhattan seems to know what to do, and instantly she leaves her bonded's side. Her head presses against Aylin's cannons familiarly, as if she has known the young mare for as long as she has trusted her master.

The young mutt moves forward to weave in between Aylin's legs affectionately and patiently, hoping to urge her down to rest as Knox has already done. She catches snippets of understanding, but struggled to piece the mare's word together.

She likes you, Knox explains to his bonded, catching her eyes for a moment when she settled to rest beside Aylin. In her broken language, the pup replies: her too

"No, I have not been alone," Knox begins with a pressing of his nose to the earth to beckon her. "But, Aylin... I have felt alone. I think, maybe, everyone does sometimes," he continues, his blue gaze flickering from Manhattan's to catch Aylin's emerald eyes. His tone grows somewhat graver with seriousness, with gentleness. He is a quick study, his father reminds him. He has always been a fast learner, just like his ancestors were in their own time. "Stay with us, Aylin. For as long as you need to- don't isolate yourself," he offers with surprising depth and warmth. "Besides, I know for a fact my father would throw a fit if he heard I didn't offer you my company for a while longer," Knox adds with a slight upturn of the lips and a congenial nicker. He is feeling, so much and so fast. He is bright, shining within, cleansed by the rain and almost newly awoken. He is beginning at last to find himself.

The broken watches with pride as his companion confronts her habits and reaches out to Aylin. He has never seen her so affectionate with anyone else, perhaps save for Loretta and her other sisters. But even then there is always something separating the black dog from the rest. When she was younger it was her magic, always malfunctioning, hurting herself or those she loved. Those were the days, he remembers, when his own magic had found its way to block her eyes from the terrifying sights she would set loose upon herself. He thinks now how much more peaceful she is, how much more in control they are. The evidences of their failures have long since left them in some way or another.

Knox and Manhattan are left with nothing but here and now, with Aylin and her own battles that she must face. Knox can only hope, hope that he might help her as she had him. His blue eyes watch her as she moves, taking in her slimmer figure as she moves closer. He does not feel he needs permission with her; with her so close, it is only a slight craning of his neck and then his own nose rests beside her hoof, brushing faintly the skin of her ankle. His own feathered hooves curl tightly against his chest as he shifts to relax.

He is glad to hear her say she will stay- for her and for himself. He does not want to be alone with his bonded, not quite yet. The guilt of their argument may have faded from her mind, but it still haunts him. If he looks deeper, he can find the guilt lurking, too, in the back of her mind. They will act as if all is well for a time, but at some point Knox knows their truths will have to come out.

He listens intently to every word falling from Aylin's lips, comparing their sounds to that of the rain. "My father tells me stories of your mother some days," he begins quietly, his words tentative. He is unsure, after all, where Evangeline is now, and the last thing he wishes to do is to hurt Aylin. "He told me she once brought apples to a monster in his castle, and that he gave in return a gift of nature's knowledge, the power to bend trees." It all sounds so strange to Knox, but he trusts his father's every word to be true. Does Aylin know the story? Perhaps not, if Evangeline was as modest as his father makes her out to be. He watches Aylin's face carefully with an upturned gaze and a heavy sigh, making sure to watch the patterns of emotions playing across her features. He reminds himself of many things, over and over again, drilling them into his mind, but it is this that he tells himself the most: he must be her light.