Meadow

Recluse, he lurked through the thick clusters of trees throughout Crossing Isle. It still wasn’t safe, he thought, to emerge into the open clearings. They would track him. They would find him. Talya was dead and the blame sometimes lay heavy and thick over his heart, sinking it down deep into his chest… and then the voice, his oldest, closest friend, would slither from nowhere and everywhere, offering reassurances.

Talya’s dead because of Shamwari, not because of you. Talya’s dead because of Evaline, not because of you. She died protecting you. You were the perfect father. She loved you with her dying breath. We don’t have to be beholden to her memory anymore.

Psychedelic’s breathing was caught, irregular. It always seemed to hitch in his throat whenever he replayed the memory of Talya bolting between his body and the charging figure of Shamwari. Often he imagined it far more dramatic and worse than it was. Often he envisioned a shock of rich, deep red blood and the crack he’d heard was a shattered splinter of the entirety of her skeleton broken to dust before him. These thoughts, nightmares… whatever they were… they only drove him further into his madness.

It’s time for revenge.

Psychedelic’s ear twitched and his eyes narrowed in confusion. “Revenge?” He croaked – his voice raw from how long he’d been crying… he hadn’t even been aware he’d been crying until that moment. Lowering his muzzle, he rubbed the wetness from his eyes on his knees and lifted his head slowly, peering into the soft, dim shadows in front of him. Sometimes he wished he had visionary hallucinations too. Sometimes it was even lonelier to hear a voice and see no one standing with you. “What revenge?” He whispered, ears splayed out to the sides. “She’s dead.”

But they’re not…

He blinked and slowly… ever so slowly, his head lifted, and his ears swung forward. Peace had befallen the islands and had taken him prisoner. If these were to be his final days… if Shamwari would find him eventually and do him in, Psychedelic couldn’t waste them tucked away in trees like a coward waiting for death to come.

One by one, Psychedelic moved his legs and planted his hooves firmly against the discarded pine needle forest, their soft crunch a reassuring encouragement to keep moving. He emerged from the shadows of trees and stopped short, reflecting on his prior thought of visual hallucinations.

“Aurora.” His voice was louder than he meant it to be, beckoning her. He called her to see him. Was she real? Was she here and not on Luthien, like him? Or was she just a thing of his cracked mind come to haunt him for the same wrongs he committed against her that he did countless other mares before her?