who we are and all that we're trying to be
Another’s emotions hasn’t been a quandary he’d considered: but there was a flood of calm in between his apprehension, parrying away the unknown, and he swallowed, trying to rationalize everything all at once. His own sentiments were scattered and muted at best, tucked, hidden, cast aside in the heat of moments, when they weren’t required, when he was afraid of how they could be manipulated, twisted, or found lacking. His eyes maneuvered from Kiada to the unicorn, even as the mare outstretched her soft maw to Kiada’s arm, blowing gently, absorbing scents and familiarity; he was still so stupid, so ineffectual, so bewildered, standing there in the shadow of the Spire.
Only you have company now.
If a steed could arch a brow, the mare certainly had, staring back at him through the reel of his considerations, studying, examining, gliding her way through the spiderwebs of his skull. Protection, she offered, quiet and calm. You have my protection. He blinked, silent, incapable of looking anywhere else but at the gray slate and the blue eyes and the horn rising towards the sky; uncertain what it meant to be protected, when that’s all he’d ever done for anyone else.
No – there was a change. This was entirely new and terrifying.
I am Zuriel she proffered, and then said no more.
He swallowed it, Reaper and mountain, absorbed everything as best he could while the world spun beneath his feet and the actions of friends murmured in the distance. They were all bloodied and ruined and marred, but he nodded towards Kiada, incapable of uttering anything else: drained despite the healing, exhausted despite the soothing, assuaging pulse of mended arms and stitched lacerations. Then he could only hope the others had returned: without him, and not into crypts and catacombs and sepulchers.
It takes dying to know
How to live as ghosts
