[o] [PQ] [SE] Restorations

JUST STARING AT THE SUNRISE
ABOVE THIS HOLLOW TOWN
BEEN CHASING EMPTY MEMORIES
THE KIND THAT'S KEEPING YOU DOWN

He had been walking through a dream for the past year or so. He had been dreaming ever since that night, when his world broke—when she had died. Goose, the Husky that walked at his left side, had helped wake him little by little. He'd breathed in, and realized all the while that he'd circled up and hid, the world had marched on. His family, his friends, they'd scattered, and he was as alone as he'd made himself. So he'd promised the dog to wake up each day and work. He'd promised to help the frozen city he'd come to call home. He'd even promised the honeybee.

That was the promise that caught in his chest though. It had barely been realized before he frantically clutched all those promises back and swallowed them. He'd run, again, because distance was the only thing that ensured he could not hurt them and they could not hurt him. Then, when he tried to hurt himself, he drank until he was too numb to feel anything at all, pain included.

That had been more than a year ago, and Iskra was tentatively waking up again. The broadcast from Vox had been a peal in his mind, and like a timid groundhog he'd poked his head out of his house and exhaled into the cold; a question that asked, what is going on? The world had plunged on without him again.

Goose barked softly at the two men who had gathered by a familiar cabin. Iskra paused in his thoughtfully thoughtless walk, blinking the residual sleep from his eyes as he realized he knew both of them. They likely barely remembered; a single meeting, and an offer of help that he'd withdrawn abruptly. Self-loathing bubbled inside of him, but he bit it back with a smile, one that came surprisingly easily to him. "Hey." He wouldn't look much worse for wear. That was the trick: to hide it.

THIS SENSE OF INDECISION
AIN'T WHAT WE HAD IN MIND
THE DREAM THAT I ENVISIONED
I AM STILL HOPING TO FIND