Muck, murk, madness. Thick upon me it clings, suffocating, stifling. I am a sole speck in this master universe, my mind cannot comprehend its own insignificance. How frail a single life is, how short, a tiny spark in the grand scheme of the ever spinning galaxy we are stuck within. Air refuses to suck into my lungs, and I feel as if the earth shakes and shudders beneath me with the ferocity of an untamed beast. It isn’t for many long moments that I discover with an odd detachment that the jerking is coming from my own body, my muscles betraying me, completely losing control over my sensibilities and motor skills. Wounded, wrecked, worthless. All around come whispers, taunts, sick cadences of insidious vows that coil in my harks and bleed into my cranium to wrap like liquid cyanide around my thoughts, stabbing deep into the weakness inside me, cackling as I crack and crumble beneath the weight of something nobody can see, comprehend, envision. Cold, cold, so cold. Chill seeps into my bones, into my flesh and soul, a slice of a scalpel down my spine, sweet agony. Ligaments, joints, tissue. I am a machine, I am nothing more than a container. All working in perfect harmony, a melody I wrench my ears away from, shrieking as I try to find meaning in a life already ending, forever working its way towards rest in a place I fear to believe in.

Shudder, shake, slip, stumble. Scream.

A wailing demon struck through with an arrow I am wounded, shrieking into the emptiness we have been left in, ripping my vocal chords in that delicious torment I seemed to embrace like a lost lover that had never existed at my side. They bleed in my thoughts, uncaring of the inescapable fact that physically I am perfection, am the epitome of health that accursed borns look to with envy as I waste away splendor they were not permitted. This fleshed prison betrays me, demanding sweet oxygen, and I must waste away my cry to obey. My pants come in sobs, quivers and quakes only worsening as I stumble and scrape my hide against unseen trees. Whether they are sightless due to the darkness we have been abandoned in, or my own treasonous tears, I am clueless. Such things that were easy and effortless are now a struggle. My mind has betrayed me at long last, stabbed an impeccably crafted dagger between my ribs, one I had created through years of toil. I had anticipated this act of betrayal for years, but the leap off the cliff of sanity and control is far more terrifying than I had been attempting to prepare for.

Words, whispers, worry.

Resplendence?

Sob, shake, sniffle.

I turn my head, braced upon the poplar, and meet her worried nudge, brushing my muzzle across her cheek as I shake like the last autumn leaf in a gale far too strong for my meagre will. ”R-Resplendence...” I whimpered brokenly, and I can feel my tears sliding unbroken down my cheeks, chilling my face further as the cruel icy wind brushes past us sinisterly. ”I-I....I-” My mouth does not function, my tongue thick and heavy in my mouth, my lungs scrabbling for air up my throat despite the breaths I draw. Blind with hunger for something I cannot give, cannot seek.

I am interrupted in my explanation, one I feel I can’t form mentally nor physically. Satan slithers in the swamps, venomous eyes pinpointing its prey for the night. I do not see it immediately, a ripple of shadow all that attracts my eyes, and then a hellish whisper, gravel crunched into brittle bones, growl of a hellhound from the reaches of the bloodied depths of the spirit world where tainted souls scream their fury into flames and sear the flesh off their own bones just to feel again. He lunges.

I get pulled back in time.

---

”Don’t call me small!” A young Rowan lurched forward towards the much larger colt nearest to her, teeth wide as she clenched down on his fat neck, swollen and plump with milk from a mother who had not abandoned him. She does not see his friend charging for her side, but she feels the ram of his body into her flank, ripping her teeth soundly from his companion in a spray of crimson as she is brought to earth brutally, stumbling. Winded, she gasps uselessly, unable to move as they leap upon her to put her in her place.

Pain.

---

Now, I face more than a hornless colt, I face a full grown demon with spikes upon his brow. They aim not for me, but for a soul so pure and so close to me I dare to call her my sister. More than wind will be knocked from her precious body, life itself will. ”No!” I bellow and shove forward from where I had turned to talk to Resplendence, using my right shoulder to aim to shove her away from him, to take her place as I lunge forward.

You have so much more to live for than I do, Resplendence.

Pain.

It’s deja vu, as I feel those spears pierce my side, rip me apart in punishment for an act both heroic and selfish. I scream, I cannot help it, even if this cur does not deserve the satisfaction of hearing my agony in his ears. I seize, shudder as my vision whites out, driven through on his spikes. There is nothing I can do to fight back, I can’t even imagine doing so as fire plants itself within my body, rips me apart and stomps on the shreds, rakes up and down my insides with claws of blood and stone. Carmine is quick to flow in hot streaks down my side, running to drop as acidic rain upon the bog, the dead feasting upon the fresh life even as mine will surely wilt away to meet them. I don’t want to die in a place like this, I don’t want to be afraid when I die.

A lung must have been pierced, for blood is upon my tongue and sprays over my lips as I scream and wheeze. It’s all moving so fast, how long has it been since he rammed his horns into me? It feels like years.

This is what you get for being so weak, Rowan. Mother was right to leave you. A freak deserves to die in a place like this.