[SE] Small and tender things

You made yourself a bed
At the bottom of the blackest hole

When Tal moved, Alys found herself inching forward behind him. However much she wished she was beside him, sharing in the burden of whatever lingered outside, she didn't have magical goggles with which to see through the darkness. Instead, she kept a firm grip on him. Anything that sought to pull him from her grasp would have to take her, too. She wasn't going to lose him - not ever, but especially not after losing Sascha.

The gurgling outside quieted, and Alys stayed still and silent, tense in the darkness even with the fire that Boreal had relit dancing behind her. If anything, the flames made the scene all the more terrifying. Alys twitched as a shadow jumped nearby, waiting for something - anything - to happen. It felt like hours passed in the breadth of a heartbeat as she waited for Tal to move, to breathe, to say something. Anything that might indicate what they were up against.

And convinced yourself that
It's not the reason you don't see the sun anymore

Alys

Silence.

Tal stood in the window, looking down at the body. The monster. The snow. Dark splashes across white.

Dagger in his hand.

Eyes, plucked out as time froze within him. Held his weapon in bands of ice. Congealed in his lungs and stole his breath.

There was so much blood.

And the Void, feasting at his doorstep.





And then

it was

gone.

Tal stared down at what it left behind and a tremble started in his fingers. Traveled up his arm until it reached his chest and he began to shiver. He felt Alys against him, burning like a flame against the ice beneath his skin. Felt Boreal whimpering in the back of his mind, scratching at the glacier that had wrapped around his thoughts.

---

He was standing back inside the house. He could not remember how he got there. The sound of his Dagger clattering to the floor brought him back to himself as he started to shake in earnest, fingers twitching in empty air around a hilt he no longer held. "...It's... gone," he rasped in the voice of a man who had not tasted water in days, even though he had taken a sip of wine not two minutes before.

You made yourself a bed
At the bottom of the blackest hole

For a long moment - or was it hours? - Tal stood frozen at the window, and Alys waited in tense silence behind him for any indication of what went on upon their doorstep. And just when she thought she couldn’t stand it anymore, her partner began to shake, his dagger clattering to the floor and making Alys jump from the sudden break in the silence. ”What -“ she began, her face pale and her voice shaking, but then Tal rasped out that the threat was gone.

So why did he look so devastated?

”Tal,” she said gently, tugging him carefully away from the shattered window and using her telekinesis to bring the discarded dagger along. ”Hey, I’m here. Boreal’s here. We’re okay.” Something he had seen had shaken him to his core, and though she didn’t yet know what it was, she knew that the only thing she could offer was her presence, calming and unshakeable, in an attempt to bring him back to himself.

And convinced yourself that
It's not the reason you don't see the sun anymore

Alys

He followed Alys without resistance, a numbing shock starting to creep through his bones in the wake of the icy dread that lingered in his skittering thoughts. Their plans for the evening lay forgotten like their wineglasses on the coffee table - bizarrely unharmed in the sudden violence of the last few minutes.

Violence, and death.

Alys's voice reached him through the ice congealing in his veins and her hands drew him back, away from the window and the cold air from it that swirled into their once-cozy home. A shudder ran from his heels up to his head and he convulsively wrapped his arms around her, burying his face in her hair while Boreal twisted tight around their legs and then set herself to watching his back. She rumbled a quiet, reassuring croon as she faced the gaping maw into the dark, keeping a suspicious eye on every snowflake that blew in on Deepfrost's fickle winds.

"...Okay," he echoed into Alys's hair, unable to tell her what he'd seen - what he'd done. Not right now. Not just yet.

Not when the face of the woman lying broken on the ground outside didn't belong to anyone he knew.

But what if it had?

It was going to be a long, cold LongNight until the sun rose again.

~fin