While the rest of the world burns with the lambent hues of autumn, Atlantis escapes the flame. Existing apart from the cycle of seasons that plagues the more temperate climes, Paradise is immortal. It is unchanging; a timeless place, though this protection does not extend to its denizens. Rade has changed, even if the fine layer of dust that films his golden pelt is the same as it has always been. He is no longer the bright, animated. creature who had arrived on the islands two seasons ago. There is a darkness to him where he has been marked by pain, and a detachment as he watches his kingdom crumble into ruin around him. Rade no longer fights the inevitability of his destruction, he simply waits for it. Days pass in the breadth of an instant, and an instant can stretch on for an endless eternity. And when the moment of reckoning arrives, the amber eyes that regard the approaching figure lack the spark of defiance. The fire has gone out of the palomino stallion; he doesn't care. For a long time Rade has expected this confrontation, anticipated it, but he just doesn't care anymore.

There is a familiarity in the concealed anguish of Floyd's call, though, that he understands. The tapestries of their lives - this Lagoon man and he - are irreversibly interwoven, tied together first by the bond of their rivalry, and now by the threads of their shared pain. Rade should be glad for Floyd's pain - had it not been his original intent for the buckskin to endure the same pain of loss that he has known? - but instead he feels nothing. His chest is hollow, and though he resorts to inhaling greedily of the air in a desperate attempt to fill it, the ache returns with each exhale of breath. Moving his feet to the rhythm of his heart, Rade emerges from the jungle and into the caress of the sun's rays, though he makes no effort to approach the other man. The distance between them is more than physical; it is a gulf formed of differences, of crimes both real and imagined. And since there are no words that can breach it, Rade does not speak. He simply breathes, allowing the tension of the moment to fill the silence.

He knows without asking what the General has come for.

stallion // mongrel // 15.1hh // 4 // palomino roan // reba
neassa x debonaire