RORY
It wasn't that he was tired—(He was, but it was all in his soul)
It was just the cold. The long hours of today. The pain. The physical labor. The worry. The emptiness. They were little monsters, all of them, and they carved his soul out and ate it and he was left a husk. Hollow and confused. The excitement at having done it, at having summoned the Spark Bird, was gone. All he had was an empty house, missing ponies, and the dangerous, definite feeling that things could never, truly, go back to what they had been.
And he couldn't so quickly forget the way his mind had turned him against his friends; and how easily they had been turned against him, too.
He was staring through the floor when a hand fell upon his shoulder. An echo of another time, when more people had lived in this haunted house, when his sister would've knocked on his back and asked what was wrong, or his mother would've enveloped him in a tight, silent hug—
All he wants to do is fall back against her, against someone solid, and be held.
But he didn't. Instead, he walked like a sleepwalker, steered back towards the fire he had gravitated aimlessly away from, and he soon found himself in the rocking chair, underneath a blanket. Warmth radiated from the hearth, seeping into the wool fibers. And he just felt so useless as he nodded to her words, absently folding his hands into his lap after she had left.
His hand and shoulder still felt strange where she had touched him. Some distant part of him was surprised, and deeply, deeply moved by her care.
He was left to stare pensively at the flames while she raided his kitchen, but not much of actual substance passed through his mind. Mostly, he thought about how fucked-up everything had become, how empty he felt, and how worried he was about his missing ponies and his missing sister. She hadn't come by today.
But the warmth slowly did its job, and by the time Wessex returned to him, he looked slightly more alert and was absently rubbing the knuckles on one hand. He inhaled, preparing to thank her, to apologize for his state, but her voice beat his and she was the one who chased the silence away.
He looked at her steadily, a flicker of something that was hard to place passing through his heart. Slowly, he nodded.
as if you were on fire from within,
the moon lives in the lining of your skin.
the moon lives in the lining of your skin.
