Oathsworn to Ylva
She runs from him and it is all the answer he needs to know that he is no longer welcome in the single place where he had once thought he could come home to. The world yawns like a giant chasm before him in the moment she bolts, for all that she trips and falls into the wet earth. He does not pursue her, he is a broken thing already with not a pieces of cliff to claw his fingernails into. As if he is a monster, she rips the last of his purchase away to save herself and he accepts the damnation that waits for him below. He had done too much evil, had helped the rise of such an evil king, that he should have known that there was karma waiting for his turn.
"Understood, Lady."
Not my. Never his. It had been silly to confess such things when he had never before been gifted that regard. Foolish, overstepping, arrogant. He stands still, angling to the side by two steps… but just as he has accepted his fate to persist in emptiness-- what she asks him is space. She does not send him away. He does not hear her final plea through the roaring in his ears, past the very roaring of the waterfall that had muted his own for her - but even if he had, she only asked him to become less. He might have died if she had asked it, given him the permission to cease to fight as a command from his only remaining purpose. But he could not ask such a thing for himself and he knew that even in anger - such a command would not come to him from her.
He stands, yet, because he is too valiant to crack his own head against the stones or to pray to the trees to be felled atop him. He is not the kind who had ever gladly accepted death or loved it well enough to seek that embrace of peace. His was a life of gnashing teeth and pummeling hooves and raucous warcries. His was a life of striving to live. No matter how he yearned for quiet, for peace, for comfort - he had not known it well enough to fall.
He cannot chase her, for she has refused him that closeness, but he cannot leave her, because he never would be able to do anything else. All that was left to him was the ghostly pretending of a life mechanically doing only what was needed to serve his final purpose. Protect her. As ever, he was not necessary to her living, but he could contribute at least to her protection. The heart that had welled up in him, the joy that had etched into his ever muscle slackens.
He stands with ears to the sides, eyes listless, neck laxed in height, only his body seeming to expect a command. She was in pain and he was only worsening - stay back, remain still, become a overlookable facet of the background. Invisible, though existing. No pressure of life, of love, of hope, of feeling. Just a statue of flesh that would eventually melt into shadow and become only the more disregardable. His first movement since angling towards her is only to step out of the way of any path she might choose and to look away as to alleviate the pressure of his gaze. She wanted less, needed less, and this was as best as he was able to reduce himself to a less burdensome size.
OF THE LOST ISLANDS’ WILDS
▻ sixteen years - friesian - heterozygous black - 16.1 hh ◅